firewood and whatever else the waves threw up which would be a help to
them in their poor lives.

If it be so, I thought, some change will surely come into those
unchanging eyes at the sight of all these merry, happy golfers on their
way to their hotel and their cars and luxurious homes. But though I
watched her face closely there was no change, no faintest trace of ill-
feeling or feeling of any kind; only that same shadow which had been
there was there still, and her fixed eyes were like those of a captive
bird or animal, that gaze at us, yet seem not to see us but to look
through and beyond us. And it was the same when they had all gone by
and we finished our talk and I put money in her hand; she thanked me
without a smile, in the same quiet even tone of voice in which she had
replied to my question about the samphire.

I went up once more to the top of the ridge, and looking down saw her
again as I had seen her at first, only dimmer, swiftly, lightly moving
or flitting moth-like or ghost-like over the low flat salting, still
gathering samphire in the cold wind, and the thought that came to me
was that I was looking at and had been interviewing a being that was
very like a ghost, or in any case a soul, a something which could not
be described, like certain atmospheric effects in earth and water and
sky which are ignored by the landscape painter. To protect himself he
cultivates what is called the "sloth of the eye": he thrusts his
fingers into his ears so to speak, not to hear that mocking voice that
follows and mocks him with his miserable limitations. He who seeks to
convey his impressions with a pen is almost as badly off: the most he
can do in such instances as the one related, is to endeavour to convey
the emotion evoked by what he has witnessed.