The sea was broken here. It lapped idle, and was green and halted by the blue purl of the river that came out to be lost in the sea’s freedom. The bay was quieter than the scudding grass that marged it. There was a rocking stillness everywhere against which the earnest and sharp sally of the pipers in the sea-weed was a dissonant shred. Here Tom threw himself down and took the pungent air into his eyes and mouth and let it moisten the strain of his body. He was immersed in the sweet summer. A mood grew on him. He learned of a mistake that he had made. Upon the contrast and the stillness of this place came something from without and filled it and made its song. He found that he was longing for the comradeship of David. Sitting idle and full of the sap of the summer, he found that the part of him which warmed him was straining outward, toward a vague thing indeed--since he wanted no specific thing of David--but with a pull that had no vagueness. He found himself unable to partake of the gentle world he was in. He found himself tangenting from it, making of his wish a rod to vault him back into the burning City. He sat musing, half asleep, without sense of time. He dug with his fingers in the sand. He watched a bug voyage from spot to spot with a rapt floating interest. He tried to enjoy a cigarette, with a sense telling him that the air had a sweeter perfume, could he but swing himself to know it. Unease was on him. He consulted his watch and its denotation of the hours was like news from a far country. Impulse to move was balked by lack of desire to go. He stayed, balanced, bored, strangely exhausted with these hours of indolence, glad of the excuse of hunger to make him move. The beach was bedlam. He went through the throngs, as if he were wading a morass. Only the buffet of the waves when he swam beyond the breakers gave him a resistance where he could dwell with a certain comfort. But he could not bathe all day. He went in to dinner. A sort of immersement in a black pot where food was. Clatter of dishes, hot stickiness of human motion, flies stuck on paper. It was hard to part the tasteless substance of his neighbors from the sodden stuff he prodded down his throat. He escaped to the sea. While the populace digested, he could be alone with it. It beat in monotone upon his world: it flayed it. The sea lay there cruelly content, droning its repetitious chant. Until the endless song mounted, terraced, burst in his ears like a vast shout of conquest. Tom felt an invasion. His small body was being swept by a terrene monster. The sea’s laborious approach against his nerves was no relief from the crepitous _guerilla_ of the women, children, men, beating their individual sticks and stones upon him. Tom went back to the deserted bay where the sea was less the sea. And, gazing at the watery world, he wondered by what spell the ocean had even been a balm to him: by what strength he had dared love it.