pattern of quartered squares, raised slightly in the centre, is being
worked out. Many of the squares are finished, but the fabric is rugged at
the edges, where, with miraculous precision, the design is being
followed, each tiny stitch the counterpart of its fellow. Unless this
gross and formless blotch of sage green interferes or this disc of royal
blue expands, the whole under surface of the stone may be covered with an
orange coloured quilt as dainty as if wrought by fairy fingers.

Why, again, is this particular miniature dome of coral so precisely
spirally fluted, like the dome of a Byzantine cathedral? Why of so pure a
mauve and bespangled with so many millions of snow-white crystals?
Why--where no eyes see them--should parti-coloured algae flaunt such
graceful, flawless plumes? What marvellous fertility of imagination in
form and design is exhibited in every quiet coral garden! Stolid
battlemented walls, massive shapeless blocks, rollicking mushrooms, tipsy
toadstools; narrow fjords, sparklingly clear, wind among and intersect
the stubborn masses. Fish, bright as butterflies and far more alert,
flash in and out of mazes more bewildering than that in which Rosamond's
bower was secluded. Starfish stud the sandy flats, a foot in diameter,
red with burnished black bosses, and in all shades of red to pink and
cream and thence to derogatory grey. Here is a jade-coloured
conglomeration of life resembling nothing in the world more than a loose
handful of worms without beginning and without end, interloped and
writhing and glowing as it writhes with opalescent fires; and here a
tiny leafless shrub, jointed with each alternate joint, ivory, white, and
ruby-red respectively; again this tracery of gold and green and salmon
pink decorating a shiny stone, in formal and consistent pattern. What is
it? why is it? and why are such luminous tints so sordidly concealed?