To her right, though, there was a cable, curving down into the sea, and rising far out, after nearly touching the sands, to ascend to the deck of a large smack aground on the bank. That rope was one mass of lambent light, a huge chain of pallid gold that glowed all round; and as Claire Denville gazed there was a rift in the clouds overhead, and from far above the rays from a cluster of stars were reflected like a patch of diamonds in the sea, and she turned shudderingly away to gaze down once more at the transparent darkness, where the moving specks seemed to have a peculiar fascination. How the softly flowing and ebbing waves whispered below there amid the piles and down under the platform where her brother used to fish! How soothing and restful it all was to her aching head! The troubles that had been maddening her seemed to float away, and everything was calm and cool. As she stood thinking there a dreamy sensation came over her, such as comes to those who have awakened after the crisis of a fever. Hers had been a fever of the brain, a mental fever; and now all seemed so calm and still that she heaved a sigh, half sob, and the troubles died away in the past. The transparent water into which she gazed, with its flashes of luminous splendour, seemed to grow more and more mysterious and strange. It was so like oblivion that it began to tempt her to trust herself to it and rest: for she was so weary! Trouble after trouble--the long series of cares--had been so terrible a strain that she felt that she could bear no more, and that the sea offered her forgetfulness and rest. She did not know why she came there: it was not against her will--it was not with her will. Her mind seemed to be stunned, and it was as if her wearied body had drawn her there. She leaned over the rail, with the cool, soft, refreshing air bathing her burning forehead, and watched one brilliant point of light--soft and lambent--that was near the surface, and then moved slowly down lower and lower into the dark depths that seemed beyond fathoming; and, as she watched it, the fancy came upon her that these points of light might be lives like hers, wearied out and now resting and gliding here and there in the soft transparent darkness at her feet. Father--brother--sister--Richard Linnell--her past cares--all appeared distant and strange, and she had no more control over herself than has one in a dream. There was that weariness of spirit--of a spirit that had been whipped and spurred until jaded beyond endurance--that weariness that asked for rest--rest at whatever cost; and whispered that rest could only come in the great sleep--the last. It did not seem like death, to step from the end of the pier into the dark water. There was nothing horrible therein. On the contrary, it wooed and beckoned her to its breast, offering utter oblivion when, in her more lucid moments, she felt she must go mad.