The Cove was hidden by black rocks, piled together, seeming, through the mist, to be animals herded together to guard its sanctity. Under the rocks the Cove lay, curved like a small golden saucer, the sea forming here a thin glassy lake, protected by a further range of rocks that extended, as though placed there by human agency, across the mouth of the tiny circle. The water within the rocks was utterly clear, the seaweed, red-gold and green, covering the inside of the cup: when the waves broke beyond the barrier they were echoed here by a faint ripple that trembled, in green shadows, like a happy sigh across the surface, and, with this ripple, came the echo of the dull boom that the surging tide was making in the distant caves: this echo was a giant’s chuckle, sinister, malevolent, but filtered. When the tide was coming in, the ripples, running in faint lines from side to side, covered the shining surface of the rocks and stones, with layers of water, thin and fine like silk, now purple, now golden, now white and grey. The silk stretched over the rocks, drew itself taut, then spilt itself suddenly, with a delighted ecstasy, in cascades of shining water, into the breast of the retreating tide. As the tide went out, very reluctantly the colour withdrew from the rocks, leaving them, at last, hard and dry beneath the sun ... but at the heart of the smooth, glassy cup, on these warm spring days, there was a great peace and content: birds, sea-gulls, sparrows, thrushes, came to the edge of the golden sand, and with trembling, twittering happiness listened to the hollow booming in the distant caves. Lying there, on the little beach, upon such a spring day as this, man might be assured that the world had been made only for his especial comfort and safety. The intense blue of the sky, the green wall of hill behind him, these things could not change: for an hour of his journey, life, gay rather than solemn, humorous rather than ironic, satisfying and complete, would seem to be revealed to him. He would wonder that he had ever doubted it....