The beauty of the last hour of light is upon that crescent of sea, and the ships loll upon the long strand, the tapering masts and slacking ropes vanish upon the pallid sky.  There is the old town, dusty, and dreamy, and brown, with neglected wharfs and quays; there is the new town, vulgar and fresh with green paint and trees, and looking hungrily on the broad lands of the Squire, the broad lands and the rich woods which rise up the hill side to the barn on the limit of the downs.  How beautiful the great green woods look as they sweep up a small expanse of the downs, like a wave over a slope of sand.  And there is a house with red gables where the girls are still on the tennis lawn.  John walked through the town; he told the doctor he must go at once to the rectory.  He walked to Leywood and left his letter with the lodge-keeper; and then, as if led by a strange fascination, he passed through the farm gate and set out to return home across the hills.

“She was here with me yesterday; how beautiful she looked, and how graceful were her laughter and speech,” he said, turning suddenly and looking down on the landscape; on the massy trees contrasting with the walls of the town, the spine-like bridge crossing the marshy shore, the sails of the mill turning over the crest of the hill.  The night was falling fast, as a blue veil it hung down over the sea, but the deep pure sky seemed in one spot to grow clear, and suddenly the pale moon shone and shimmered upon the sea.  The landscape gained in loveliness, the sheep seemed like phantoms, the solitary barns like monsters of the night.  And the hills were like giants sleeping, and the long outlines were prolonged far away into the depths and mistiness of space.  Turning again and looking through a vista in the hills, John could see Brighton, a pale cloud of fire, set by the moon-illumined sea, and nearer was Southwick, grown into separate lines of light, that wandered into and lost themselves among the outlying hollows of the hills; and below him and in front of him Shoreham lay, a blaze of living fire, a thousand lights; lights everywhere save in one gloomy spot, and there John knew that his beloved was lying dead.  And further away, past the shadowy marshy shores, was Worthing, the palest of nebulae in these earthly constellations; and overhead the stars of heaven shone as if in pitiless disdain.  The blown hawthorn bush that stands by the burgh leaned out, a ship sailed slowly across the rays of the moon.  Yesterday they parted here in the glad golden sunlight, parted for ever, for ever.

“Yesterday I had all things—­a sweet wife and happy youthful days to look forward to.  To-day I have nothing; all my hopes are shattered, all my illusions have fallen.  So is it always with him who places his trust in life.  Ah, life, life, what hast thou for giving save cruel deceptions and miserable wrongs?  Ah, why did I leave my life of contemplation and prayer to enter into that of desire....  Ah, I knew, well I knew there was no happiness save in calm and contemplation.  Ah, well I knew; and she is gone, gone, gone!”