sea, felt it; the sandpipers, drunk with it, staggered on twiggy legs. Bronzed thighs and shoulders, shining in the green shallows marbled with foam.... The transitive billow of cloud slipped away beyond the roof; again the strong resinous air was clarified, streamed with gracious light. His mind almost smiled at his fatuity: the sentiment did not graduate into an actual smile, but spent itself in a tiny whiff of self-deprecation through his nostrils. He stretched upward, raising his arms, standing tiptoed, feeling the calf-tendons tighten and coolness in his fingers as the blood sank. His hands met a low limb that reached across his head. He gripped it and chinned himself. There was good animal satisfaction in feeling the quiver in the biceps, the hanging weight of his body. Well, we’re not done for yet, he said to himself. No, sir, not yet. He capered a few dance steps on the silky floor of needles, and pulled out his pipe.... * * * * * She was coming. He saw her coming, swiftly across the lawn. No, not swiftly; evenly was the word; unquestioningly; as he had always known she would come. His mouth was open to warn her of the croquet hoops, but she passed surely among them. When he saw her face, he knew this was something not to be spoiled by words. Her face was enough. In that unreasonable glamour she was pure fable: the marble (Oh, too cold, too hard a word) come to life. There was no pang, no trouble, no desire; he knew only that there is some answer to the gorgeous secret: the secret that the world is in conspiracy to deny---- No, not to deny; more cunning than that: to admit and pass heedless on. There was meaning in everything; significance in the shapes of things. The black plumes and pinnacles of the trees were fashioned exactly so, could never have been otherwise. They were away from rooms and roofs. They were on the beach; the tide was far ebbed, they ran over mirrors of sand, they were in sparkling black water milder than air. Still there were no words; their white bodies gleamed in silver, laved in snowy fans of surf. They were just themselves, chafing impediments were gone; nothing was between them and they wanted nothing. They ran, breathing warmly, to burrow in the powdery cliff, where the acid smell of sharp grasses sifted down from the dunes. They lay in a hollow of sand; she curled against him, nestled smoothly close, he could feel her thrilling with small quivers of joy. There was no pang, no trouble, no desire; only peace.