The handle of the door turned, and a young man came in. He was in the pink of fashion--a mantle of Venetian silk disposed in graceful folds about his handsome person, his neckcloth of Flanders lace, his knee-breeches of satin, his shoes gold-buckled, his dagger jewelled. Energy flashed from his eye, vigor radiated from his every movement. "Ah, Diedrich!" she cried, as her face lit up with more than relief. "Here is Heer Spinoza at last. This is Heer Kerkkrinck!" "Spinoza!" A thrill of awe was in the young man's voice, the reverence of the consciously stupid for the great brains of the earth. He did not take Spinoza's outstretched hand in his but put it to his lips. The lonely thinker and the happy lover stood thus for an instant, envying and admiring each other. Then Spinoza said cordially, "And now that I have had the pleasure of meeting Heer Kerkkrinck I must hurry back to town ere the road grows too dark." "But father expects thee to sup with us," murmured Klaartje. "'Tis a moonless night, and footpads may mistake me for a Jew." He smiled. "Make my apologies to the doctor." It was indeed a moonless night, but he did not make for the highroad. Instinctively he turned seawards. A slight mist brooded over the face of all things, adding to the night, blurring the village to a few gleams of fire. On the broad sandy beach he could just see the outlines of the boats and the fishing-nets. He leaned against the gunwale of a _pink_, inhaling the scents of tar and brine, and watching the apparent movement seawards of some dark sailing-vessel which, despite the great red anchor at his feet, seemed to sail outwards as each wave came in. The sea stretched away, soundless, moveless, and dark, save where it broke in white foam at his feet; near the horizon a pitch-black wall of cloud seemed to rise sheer from the water and join the gray sky that arched over the great flat spaces. And in the absence of stars, the earth itself seemed to gain in vastness and mystery, its own awfulness, as it sped round, unlessened by those endless perspectives of vaster planets. And from the soundless night and sea and sky, and from those austere and solemn stretches of sand and forest, wherein forms and colors were lost in a brooding unity, there came to Spinoza a fresh uplifting sense of the infinite, timeless Substance, to love and worship which was exaltation and ecstasy. The lonely thinker communed with the lonely Being. "Though He slay me," his heart whispered, "yet will I trust in Him." Yea, though the wheels of things had passed over his body, it was still his to rejoice in the eternal movement that brought happiness to others.