He walked through the southern sunlight of the town to the long expanse of sea.  The mundane pier is taut and trim, and gay with the clangour of the band, the brown sails of the fishing boats wave in the translucid greens of water; and the white field of the sheer cliff, and all the roofs, gables, spires, balconies, and the green of the verandahs are exquisitely indicated and elusive in the bright air; and the beach is strange with acrobats and comic songs, nursemaids lying on the pebbles reading novels, children with their clothes tied tightly about them building sand castles zealously; see the lengthy crowd of promenaders—­out of its ranks two little spots of mauve come running to meet the advancing wave, and now they fly back again, and now they come again frolicking like butterflies, as gay and as bright.

Under the impulse of his ravening grief, John watched the spectacle of the world’s forgetfulness, and the seeming obscenity horrified him even to the limits of madness.  He cried that it might pass from him.  Solitude—­the solemn peace of the hills, the appealing silence of a pine wood at even; how holy is the idea of solitude, find it where you will.  The Gothic pile, the apostles and saints of the windows, the deep purples and crimsons, and the sunlight streaming through, and the pathetic responses and the majesty of the organ do not take away, but enhance and affirm the sensation of idea and God.  The quiet rooms austere with Latin and crucifix; John could see them.  Fondly he allowed these fancies to linger, but through the dream a sense of reality began to grow, and he remembered the narrowness of the life, when viewed from the material side, and its necessary promiscuousness, and he thought with horror of the impossibility of the preservation of that personal life, with all its sanctuary-like intensity, which was so dear to him.  He waved away all thought of priesthood, and walking quickly down the pier, looking on the gay panorama of town and beach, he said, “The world shall be my monastery.”