They walked to the limits of it when he had finished, and sat on the outermost spur of rock. The ocean was like glass; yet the water pulsed to and fro past them between the long limestone ledges, as it rose and fell with the breath of the sleeping blue breast of the sea. And the tender sounds of it never ceased. Soft thumps in the blind tunnels beneath them, a crystal kiss that whitened an edge of stone, the whisper of clear rillets that ran up and tinkled down again, finding no pool to hold them; and, under all, the brushing, backwards and forwards in the moving water, of the yellow tangle of weed. Caragh remained but a short time in the seat he had chosen. Rising, he stood at the margin of the sea, shifting his footing now and then, to scan some fresh wonder of colour, and with his ears intent on the soft complexity of sound. He seemed entirely to have forgotten his companion's presence, and Lettice watched him with an interest which became annoyed. "One would think you had never seen such a thing before," she said. He turned at the sound of her words, but came more slowly to their meaning. "Oh, one never has seen, or heard, anything before; it's always different," he replied, smiling. "Just listen to that little pool emptying; it runs up a whole octave, but such a queer scale! yet a minute ago I couldn't hear it! And the comic cadence of the water in that gully, it almost makes one laugh. How old Bach would have played with it. But you don't hear?" "Not a note," she said with tight lips; "but I've no ear." Caragh caught the tone of grievance. He smiled across at her. "It's sheer vanity to say that," he tossed back; "but I'll admit if your ears were smaller no one could see them." He stepped over the intervening ledges, and they picked their way side by side to the beach. "But it is wonderful," he continued, "that there's a whole world round us that we listen to and look at for years and years, yet never either hear or see till some strange fortunate moment." He put his hand under her outstretched arm as her balance wavered upon a ridge. "Why, this may be Paradise after all, only we don't notice the angels." His fingers closed on her elbow as she slipped upon a piece of weed. "You shouldn't avow it, though you do ignore me," she said reproachfully. "Ah," he sighed, as they stepped down upon the strand, "you do no justice to my plural. I wasn't thinking of the sort of paradise that may be made by one pair of wings. All the same," he went on reflectively, throwing himself upon the beach beside her, "it isn't as an angel that I've ever thought of you." The tide was almost at its full, and the clear deep water with its thin crystal lip, which opened and shut upon the stones, was only a yard or two from Miss Nevern's feet. Her little white shoes were thrust out straight before her, heels together, pointing to the sky, and she leaned forward looking over them across the bay.