There were rooms and passages in the upper part of the house that were equally delightful and equally solitary. He himself had in his former year at Treliss thought them melancholy and dusty; there had been no charm. But now the room of the minstrels had drawn him frequently to its doors, partly by reason of its power of suggestion—the valuation, for him, of light and sound and colour, in their true and most permanent qualities—partly by the amazing view that its deep-set windows provided. It hung forward, as it were, over the hill, so that the intervening space of garden and tower and wood was lost and there was only the sea. It seemed to creep to the very foot of the walls, and the horizon of it was so distant that it swept into infinite space, meeting the sky without break or any division. The height of the room gave the view colour, so that there were deeper blues and greens in the sea, and in the sky the greys and whites were shot with other colours that the mists of the intervening air had given them. In these last few days Maradick had watched the view with ever-increasing wonder. The sea had been to him before something that existed for the convenience of human beings—a means of transit, a pleasant place to bathe, sands for the children, and the pier for an amusing walk. Now he felt that these things were an impertinence. It seemed to him that the sea permitted them against its will, and would, one day, burst its restraint and pour in overwhelming fury on to that crowd of nurses and nigger-minstrels and parasols; he almost hoped that it would. Loneliness was, however, largely responsible for this change of view. There had been no one this time at the hotel to whom he had exactly taken. There had been men last year whom he had liked, excellent fellows. They had come there for the golf and he had seen a good deal of them. There might be some of the same kind now, but for some reason, unanalysed and very mistily grasped, he did not feel drawn towards them.