Robert Trevanion, although brought up in the same school of philosophy as his father, belonged to another generation.  The time of my history is the beginning of the latter half of the present century, and Michael was already considered somewhat of a fossil.  Robert was inconsistent, as the old doctrine when it is decaying, or the new at its advent always is; but the main difference between Michael and Robert was not any distinct divergence, but that truths believed by Michael, and admitted by Robert, failed to impress Robert with that depth and sharpness of cut with which they were wrought into his father.  Mere assent is nothing; the question of importance is whether the figuration of the creed is dull or vivid—­as vivid as the shadows of a June sun on a white house.  Brilliance of impression, is not altogether dependent on mere processes of proof, and a faultless logical demonstration of something which is of eternal import may lie utterly uninfluential and never disturb us.

Robert walked out the next morning to the house he went to visit the day before.  Nobody save Miss Shipton and himself knew anything about his adventure.  He had made some excuse for his wet clothes.  The beach of the little village in the early part of the day was almost always deserted, and the man who attended to the machine had been lying on his back on the shingle smoking his pipe during the few minutes occupied in Miss Shipton’s rescue.  It was settled weather.  The sky was cloudless, and the blue seemed on fire.  What little wind there was, was from the south-south-east, and every outline quivered in the heat.  The water inshore was absolutely still, and of such an azure as nobody whose sea is that of the Eastern Coast or the Channel can imagine.  A boat lay here and there idle, with its shadow its perfect double in unwavering detail and blackness.  Just beyond this cerulean lake the river ebb, as yesterday, rippled swiftly round Deadman’s Nose; the buoys, with their heads all eastward, breaking the stream as it impatiently hurried past them on its mysterious errand.  Beyond and beyond lay the ocean, unruffled, melting into the white haze which united it with the sky on the horizon.  Robert loved the summer, and especially a burning summer.  The sun, of which other persons complained, some perhaps sincerely, but for the most part hypocritically—­can anybody really hate the sun?—­rejoiced him.  He loved to be out in it when the light on the unsheltered Cornish rocks and in the whitewashed street was so “glaring,” as silly people called it, that they put up parasols and umbrellas, and the warmth which made him withdraw his hand smartly from the old anchor that lay on the grass just above high-water-mark, exhilarated him like wine.  He was not a poet, he knew nothing of Greek mythology; and yet on summer days like these, the landscape and seascape were all changed for him.  To say that they were a dream would be untrue—­they were the reality; the hideous winter, with its damp