In our long wanderings most paths, as we look back on them, show the little red stains where we cut our feet; we have left shreds of our soul’s garments on many a thorn by the way; but for me, and I fancy for some of you others, the breath and the sound and the touch of the sea have been nothing but coolness and healing, a sunbath for life’s chillinesses, a fountain of strength in its languors. I think I should know now the right point to make for, according to the distemper that might be assailing me; and though twenty years ago I sought and loved the onslaught of the Atlantic and the Valhalla of the March tides in the Channel, to-day I would fare no farther than my home seas, those that lap and sing on the Italian shores. I was sailing up into the Bay of Naples once just as the morning had conquered the last star; the sky was a faint milky blue and the mountains were cowled outlines, very dark and still. Not a breath stirred the sea, not a sound came from the land. Suddenly from the shadows that were neither land nor sea, I saw coming towards me a tall, glorious form, floating on the water, pointing to the sky, clothed in long, straight robes of white, making for open sea with the steady rush of a seabird on rested pinions. It took all the growing daylight to itself—it _was_ the daylight, for a few breathless seconds—a vision of the Immaculate Conception, it seemed to me; then the music of ripple on prow whispered across the water, the sun leapt up behind Sant’ Angelo; I rubbed my eyes, and lo, a slender vessel with snowy sails, tall and narrow, from some strange port, such sails as our seamen never unfurled. She brought the wind as she had taken the daylight, and a moment later she swept past in her immaculate pride and was gone.