Why does she absorb me ?" The morning was altogether uninterrupted: she was gone in the water.

Far and wide the beach, the sandhills with their blue marrain, the shining water, glowed together in immense, unbroken solitude.
"What is she, after all ?" he said to himself.

"Here's the seacoast morning, big and permanent and beautiful; there is she, fretting, always unsatisfied, and temporary as a bubble of foam.

What does she mean to me, after all?
She represents something, like a bubble of foam represents the sea.

But what is she?
It's not her I care for." Then, startled by his own unconscious thoughts, that seemed to speak so distinctly that all the morning could hear, he undressed and ran quickly down the sands.