[Prue Ramsay, leaning on her father’s arm, wasgiven in marriage that May. What, people said, couldhave been more fitting? And, they added, how beau-tiful she looked!]

As summer neared, as the evenings lengthened, therecame to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach,stirring the pool, imaginations of the strangest kind â€”of flesh turned to atoms which drove before the wind,of stars flashing in their hearts, of cliff, sea, cloud, andsky brought purposely together to assemble outwardlythe scattered parts of the vision within. In those mir-rors, the minds of men, in those pools of uneasy water,in which clouds for ever turn and shadows form, dreamspersisted, and it was impossible to resist the strangeintimation which every gull, flower, tree, man andwoman, and the white earth itself seemed to declare(but if questioned at once to withdraw) that goodtriumphs, happiness prevails, order rules; or to resistthe extraordinary stimulus to range hither and thitherin search of some absolute good, some crystal of inten-154