He had looked from the quay across to the bare shore on the other side, with its sandy hills, and its tall lighthouse on the top of the great rocks that bordered the sea; but, so looking, he had beheld space as one looking from this world into the face of the moon, as a child looks upon vastness and possible dangers from his nurse's arms where it cannot come near him; for houses backed the quay all along; the city was behind him, and spread forth her protecting arms.

He had, once or twice, run out along the pier, which shot far into the immensity of the sea, like a causeway to another world--a stormy thread of granite, beaten upon both sides by the waves of the German Ocean; but it was with the sea and not the country he then made the small acquaintance--and that not without terror.

The sea was as different from the city as the air into which he had looked up at night--too different to compare against it and feel the contrast; on neither could he set foot; in neither could he be required to live and act--as now in this waste of enterable and pervious extent.
Its own horror drove the vision away, and Gibbie saw the world again--saw, but did not love it.

The sun seemed but to have looked up to mock him and go down again, for he had crossed the crack, and was behind a thick mass of cloud; a cold damp wind, spotted with sparkles of rain, blew fitfully from the east; the low bushes among which he sat, sent forth a chill sighing all about him, as they sifted the wind into sound; the smell of the damp earth was strange to him--he did not know the freshness, the new birth of which it breathed; below him the gloomy river, here deep, smooth, moody, sullen, there puckered with the grey ripples of a shallow laughter under the cold breeze, went flowing heedless to the city.

There only was--or had been, friendliness, comfort, home! This was emptiness--the abode of things, not beings.