Plato, and went with her. We turned our steps along the edge of the down,
and descended upon the breakwater, where we seated ourselves upon the same
spot where in the darkness I had heard the voices of Joe and Agnes. What a
different night it was from that! The sea lay as quiet as if it could not
move for the moonlight that lay upon it. The glory over it was so mighty in
its peacefulness, that the wild element beneath was afraid to toss itself
even with the motions of its natural unrest. The moon was like the face of
a saint before which the stormy people has grown dumb. The rocks stood up
solid and dark in the universal aether, and the pulse of the ocean throbbed
against them with a lapping gush, soft as the voice of a passionate child
soothed into shame of its vanished petulance. But the sky was the glory.
Although no breath moved below, there was a gentle wind abroad in the upper
regions. The air was full of masses of cloud, the vanishing fragments of
the one great vapour which had been pouring down in rain the most of the
day. These masses were all setting with one steady motion eastward into the
abysses of space; now obscuring the fair moon, now solemnly sweeping away
from before her. As they departed, out shone her marvellous radiance, as
calm as ever. It was plain that she knew nothing of what we called her
covering, her obscuration, the dimming of her glory. She had been busy all
the time weaving her lovely opaline damask on the other side of the mass in
which we said she was swallowed up.

"Have you ever noticed, wifie," I said, "how the eyes of our minds--almost
our bodily eyes--are opened sometimes to the cubicalness of nature, as it
were?"

"I don't know, Harry, for I don't understand your question," she answered.

"Well, it was a stupid way of expressing what I meant. No human being could
have understood it from that. I will make you understand in a moment,