“They are all extraordinarily sweet,” said Siegmund to the full-mouthed scabious and the awkward, downcast ragwort. Three or four butterflies fluttered up and down in agitated little leaps, around him. Instinctively Siegmund put his hand forward to touch them. “The careless little beggars!” he said. When he came to the cliff tops there was the morning, very bravely dressed, rustling forward with a silken sound and much silken shining to meet him. The battleships had gone; the sea was blue with a _panier_ of diamonds; the sky was full with a misty tenderness like love. Siegmund had never recognized before the affection that existed between him and everything. We do not realize how tremendously dear and indispensable to us are the hosts of common things, till we must leave them, and we break our hearts. “We have been very happy together,” everything seemed to say. Siegmund looked up into the eyes of the morning with a laugh. “It is very lovely,” he said, “whatever happens.” So he went down to the beach; his dark blue eyes, darker from last night’s experience, smiled always with the pride of love. He undressed by his usual altar-stone. “How closely familiar everything is,” he thought. “It seems almost as if the curves of this stone were rounded to fit in my soul.” He touched the smooth white slope of the stone gently with discovering fingers, in the same way as he touched the cheek of Helena, or of his own babies. He found great pleasure in this feeling of intimacy with things. A very soft wind, shy as a girl, put his arms round him, and seemed to lay its cheek against his chest. He placed his hands beneath his arms, where the wind was caressing him, and his eyes opened with wondering pleasure. “They find no fault with me,” he said. “I suppose they are as fallible as I, and so don’t judge,” he added, as he waded thigh-deep into the water, thrusting it to hear the mock-angry remonstrance. “Once more,” he said, and he took the sea in his arms. He swam very quietly. The water buoyed him up, holding him closely clasped. He swam towards the white rocks of the headlands; they rose before him like beautiful buttressed gates, so glistening that he half expected to see fantail pigeons puffing like white irises in the niches, and white peacocks with dark green feet stepping down the terraces, trailing a sheen of silver. “Helena is right,” he said to himself as he swam, scarcely swimming, but moving upon the bosom of the tide; “she is right, it is all enchanted. I have got into her magic at last. Let us see what it is like.”