It had raved and roared too long, beating against the iron walls that held it back, and was now spent and fallen into an uneasy sleep, but still moved uneasily and moaned a little.

Then all at once summer returned, coming like a thief in the night, for when it was morning the sun rose in splendour and power in a sky without a cloud on its vast azure expanse, on a calm sea with no motion but that scarcely perceptible rise and fall as of one that sleeps.

As the sun rose higher the air grew warmer until it was full summer heat, but although a "visible heat," it was never oppressive; for all that day we were abroad, and as the tide ebbed a new country that was neither earth nor sea was disclosed, an infinite expanse of pale yellow sand stretching away on either side, and further and further out until it mingled and melted into the sparkling water and faintly seen line of foam on the horizon.

And over all--the distant sea, the ridge of low dunes marking where the earth ended and the flat, yellow expanse between--there brooded a soft bluish silvery haze.

A haze that blotted nothing out, but blended and interfused them all until earth and air and sea and sands were scarcely distinguishable.