on outspreading her evening magnificence in face of his discomfort. In
ordinal light or darkness one accepts the annoyances of life as coming
all in the day's work; but Nature has her sublime moments in which, if
the sensitive mind may not yield itself to her delight, it is forced
into extreme antagonism, either to her or to that which withholds from
joining in her ecstasy. Bates was a man sensitive to many forces, the
response to which within him was not openly acknowledged to himself. He
was familiar with the magnificence of sunsets in this region, but his
mind was not dulled to the marvel of the coloured glory in which the
daylight so often culminated.

He looked off at the western sky, at first chiefly conscious of the
unhappy girl who stood in front of him and irritated by that intervening
shape; but, as his vision wandered along the vast reaches of illimitable
clouds and the glorious gulfs of sky, his mind yielded itself the rather
to the beauty and light. More dusky grew the purple of the upper mists
whose upright layers, like league-long wings of softest feather held
edge downward to the earth, ever changed in form without apparent
movement. More sparkling glowed the gold upon their edges. The sky
beneath the cloud was now like emerald. The soft darkness of purple
slate was on the hills. The lake took on a darker shade, and daylight
began to fade from the upper blue.

It was only perhaps a moment--one of those moments for which time has no
measurement--that the soul of this man had gone out of him, as it were,
into the vastness of the sunset; and when he recalled it his situation
took on for him a somewhat different aspect. He experienced something of
that temporary relief from personal responsibility that moments of
religious sentiment often give to minds that are unaccustomed to
religion. He had been free for the time to disport himself in something