The sea played by itself, intent on its own game. Its aloofness, its self-sufficiency, are its great charm. The sea does not give and take, like the land and the sky. It has no traffic with the world. It spends its passion upon itself. Helena was something like the sea, self-sufficient and careless of the rest. Siegmund came bareheaded, his black hair ruffling to the wind, his eyes shining warmer than the sea-like cornflowers rather, his limbs swinging backward and forward like the water. Together they leaned on the wall, warming the four white hands upon the grey bleached stone as they watched the water playing. When Siegmund had Helena near, he lost the ache, the yearning towards something, which he always felt otherwise. She seemed to connect him with the beauty of things, as if she were the nerve through which he received intelligence of the sun, and wind, and sea, and of the moon and the darkness. Beauty she never felt herself came to him through her. It is that makes love. He could always sympathize with the wistful little flowers, and trees lonely in their crowds, and wild, sad seabirds. In these things he recognized the great yearning, the ache outwards towards something, with which he was ordinarily burdened. But with Helena, in this large sea-morning, he was whole and perfect as the day. “Will it be fine all day?” he asked, when a cloud came over. “I don’t know,” she replied in her gentle, inattentive manner, as if she did not care at all. “I think it will be a mixed day—cloud and sun—more sun than cloud.” She looked up gravely to see if he agreed. He turned from frowning at the cloud to smile at her. He seemed so bright, teeming with life. “I like a bare blue sky,” he said; “sunshine that you seem to stir about as you walk.” “It is warm enough here, even for you,” she smiled. “Ah, here!” he answered, putting his face down to receive the radiation from the stone, letting his fingers creep towards Helena’s. She laughed, and captured his fingers, pressing them into her hand. For nearly an hour they remained thus in the still sunshine by the sea-wall, till Helena began to sigh, and to lift her face to the little breeze that wandered down from the west. She fled as soon from warmth as from cold. Physically, she was always so; she shrank from anything extreme. But psychically she was an extremist, and a dangerous one. They climbed the hill to the fresh-breathing west. On the highest point of land stood a tall cross, railed in by a red iron fence. They read the inscription. “That’s all right—but a vilely ugly railing!” exclaimed Siegmund. “Oh, they’d have to fence in Lord Tennyson’s white marble,” said Helena, rather indefinitely. He interpreted her according to his own idea. “Yes, he did belittle great things, didn’t he?” said Siegmund. “Tennyson!” she exclaimed. “Not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things.” “I shouldn’t say so,” she declared. He sounded indeterminate, but was not really so.