largess with reckless abundance to this poor of earth--to the slime and
the mud. The long, yellow, lichen leaves massed on the rocks were dyed
as if lying in a yellow bath. The sands were richly colored; the ridges
were brown in the shadows and burnished at the tops. In the distance
the sea weeds were black, sable furs, covering the velvet robes of
earth. The sea out beyond was as rosy as a babe, and the sails were
dazzlingly white as they floated past, between the sky and the distant
purple line of the horizon.

Meanwhile the tide is coming in.

The procession of the women toward the carts grows in numbers. The
thick sabots plunge into the mud, the water squirts out of the wooden
shoes as the strong heels press into them. The straw, the universal
stocking of these women-diggers, is reeking with dirt. Volumes of slush
are splashed on the bared skinny ankles, on the wet skirts, wet to the
waists, and on the coarse sail-cloth aprons tied beneath the hanging
bosoms. The women are all drenched now in a bath of filth. The baskets
are reeking with filth also, they rain showers of dirt along the bent
backs. A long line of the bent figures has formed on their way to the
carts. There is, however, a thick fringe of diggers left who still
dispute their rights with the sea.

But the tide is pushing them inward, upward. And all the while the
light is getting more and more golden, shimmery, radiant. Under this
light, beneath this golden mantel of color, these creatures appear
still more terrible. As they bend over, their faces tirelessly held
downward on a level with their hands, they seem but gnomes; surely they
are huge, undeveloped embryos of women, with neither head nor trunk.
For this light is pitiless. It makes them even more a part of this