The damp gray sea that flowed
above and around and about him always seemed to shut out an
intangible world beyond, and to be the only real presence. The
booming of breakers scarce a dozen rods from his dwelling was but a
vague and unintelligible sound, or the echo of something past
forever. Every morning when the sun tore away the misty curtain he
awoke, dazed and bewildered, as upon a new world. The first sense
of oppression over, he came to love at last this subtle spirit of
oblivion; and at night, when its cloudy wings were folded over his
cabin, he would sit alone with a sense of security he had never
felt before. On such occasions he was apt to leave his door open,
and listen as for footsteps; for what might not come to him out of
this vague, nebulous world beyond? Perhaps even SHE,--for this
strange solitary was not insane nor visionary. He was never in
spirit alone. For night and day, sleeping or waking, pacing the
beach or crouching over his driftwood fire, a woman's face was
always before him,--the face for whose sake and for cause of whom
he sat there alone.
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