He soon found himself on the firm brown sand sprinkled with a fringe of seaweed and shells, and further adorned in various places with great rough boulders, picturesquely set up on end, like the naturally hewn memorials of great heroes passed away.
Here, the ground being level, he could walk more quickly and with greater comfort than in the one little precipitous street of Weircombe, and he paced up and down, looking at the rising and falling hollows of the sea with wistful eyes that in their growing age and dimness had an intensely pathetic expression,--the expression one sometimes sees in the eyes of a dog who knows that its master is leaving it for an indefinite period.
"What a strange chaos of brain must be that of the suicide!" he thought--"Who, that can breathe the fresh air and watch the lights and shadows in the sky and on the waves, would really wish to leave the world, unless the mind had completely lost its balance! We have never seen anything more beautiful than this planet upon which we are born,--though there is a sub-consciousness in us which prophesies of yet greater beauty awaiting higher vision.

The subconscious self! That is the scientist's new name for the Soul,--but the Soul is a better term.
Now my subconscious self--my Soul,--is lamenting the fact that it must leave life when it has just begun to learn how to live! I should like to be here and see what Mary will do when--when I am gone! Yet how do I know but that in very truth I shall be here ?--or in some way be made aware of her actions?
She has a character such as I never thought to find in any mortal woman,--strong, pure, tender,--and sincere!--ah, that sincerity of hers is like the very sunlight!--so bright and warm, and clean of all ulterior motive! And measured by a worldly estimate only--what is she?
The daughter of a humble florist,--herself a mere mender of lace, and laundress of fine ladies' linen! And her sweet and honest eyes have never looked upon that rag-fair of nonsense we call 'society';--she never thinks of riches;--and yet she has refined and artistic taste enough to love the lace she mends, just for pure admiration of its beauty,--not because she herself desires to wear it, but because it represents the work and lives of others, and because it is in itself a miracle of design.

I wonder if she ever notices how closely I watch her! I could draw from memory the shapely outline of her hand,--a white, smooth, well-kept hand, never allowed to remain soiled by all her various forms of domestic labour,--an expressive hand, indicating health and sanity, with that deep curve at the wrist, and the delicately shaped fingers which hold the needle so lightly and guide it so deftly through the intricacies of the riven lace, weaving a web of such fairy-like stitches that the original texture seems never to have been broken.

I have sat quiet for an hour or more studying her when she has thought me asleep in my chair by the fire,--and I have fancied that my life is something like the damaged fabric she is so carefully repairing,--holes and rents everywhere,--all the symmetry of design dropping to pieces,--the little garlands of roses and laurels snapped asunder,--and she, with her beautiful white hands is gently drawing the threads together and mending it,--for what purpose ?--to what end ?" And here the involuntary action of some little brain-cell gave him the memory of certain lines in Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra":-- "Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage Life's struggle having so far reached its term; Thence shall I pass, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a god, though in the germ.
And I shall thereupon Take rest ere I be gone Once more on my adventures brave and new-- Fearless--and unperplexed When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armour to indue!" * * * * * He turned his eyes again to the sea just as a lovely light, pale golden and clear as topaz, opened suddenly in the sky, shedding a shower of luminant reflections on the waves.

He drew a deep breath, and unconsciously straightened himself.
"When death comes it shall find me ready!" he said, half aloud;--and then stood, confronting the ethereal glory.