He gazed languidly at a spray, now dry and old.

The doctor explained to him that it was the sea lavender, which, in the early autumn, had flushed the shallows of the lagoon with a delicate grey lilac.
"I remember," said Michael, whitening.
It rushed back upon him, that time of waiting, marked by the flowering and the fading of the sea lavender.

The colour was seared upon his brain.
"A hundred years it is lilac," he said, "and a hundred thousand years it is a purple brown." The doctor, bending lovingly over a specimen of a rare water plant, looked up to see Michael's quivering face.

He withdrew the book gently and took it away.
Michael trembled exceedingly.

He was on the verge of some abyss which he should see clearly in another moment.