i.'.iicic of Kevieus, IJlijue. 



In the Days of the Gomet. 



627 



to set; in the east, the blue was coming to its own 

 again ; the sea was an intense edge of blackness. 



How beautiful it was ! how still and beautiful ! 

 Peace ! peace ! — the peace that passeth understand- 

 ing, robed in light descending ! 



Mv heart swelled, and suddenly I was weeping. 



I did not want to kill. 1 did not want to be the 

 servant of my passions any more. A great desire 

 had come to me to escape from life, from the day- 

 light which is heat and conflict and desire, into that 

 cool night of eternity — and rest. I had played ; I 

 had done. 



I stood upon the edge of the great ocean, and I 

 was filled with an inarticulate spirit of prayer, and 

 I desired greatly — peace from myself. 



And presently, there in the east, would come again 

 the red discolouring curtain over these mysteries, the 

 finite world again, the gray and growing harsh 

 certainties of dawn. My resolve, I knew, would take 

 me up again. This was a rest for me, an interlude, 

 but to-morrow I should be William Leadford once 

 more, ill nourished, ill dressed, ill equipped and 

 clumsy, a thief and shamed, a wound upon the face 

 of life, a source of "trouble and sorrow even to 

 the mother I loved ; no hope in life left for me now 

 but revenge before my death. 



Why this paltry thing, revenge? It entered into 

 my thoughts that I might end the matter now and 

 let others go. 



To wade out into the sea, into this warm lapping 

 that mingled the natures of water and light, to stand 

 there breast-high, to thrust my revolver barrel into 

 mv mouth ? 



Why not? 



I swung about with an effort, 

 up the beach thinking. 



I turned and looked back at the sea 

 thintr within me said, " No !" 



1 must think. 



Tt was troublesome to go farther because the 

 hummocks and the tangled bushes began. I sat 



(To be con 



I walked slowly 

 No ! Some- 



down amidst a black cluster of shrubs, a, id rested, 

 chin on hand. I drew my revolver from my pocket 

 and looked at it, and held it in my hand. Life ? 

 Or death ? 



I seemed to be probing the very deeps of being, 

 but. indeed, imperceptibh 1 fell asleep, and sat 

 dreaming. 



IV. 



Two people were bathing in the sea. 



I had awakened. It was still that white and won- 

 derful night, and the blue band of clear sky was no 

 wider than before. These people must have come 

 into sight as I fell asleep, and aw-akened me almost 

 at once. They waded breast-deep in the water, 

 emerging, coming shoreward, a woman, with her 

 hair coiled about her head, and in pursuit of her a 

 man, graceful figures of black and silver, with a 

 blight green surge flowing off from them, a pattern- 

 ing of flashing wavelets about them. 



Each wore a tightly-fijtting bathing dress that 

 hid nothing of the shining, dripping beauty of their 

 youthful forms. 



She glanced over her shoulder and found him 

 nearer than she thought, started, gesticulated, gave 

 a little cry that pierced me to the heart, and fled 

 up the beach obliquely toward me, running like the 

 wind, and passed me, vanished amidst the black, 

 distorted bushes, and was gone, she and her pur- 

 suer, in a moment, over the ridge of sand. 



I heard him shout between exhaustion and laugh- 

 ter. 



And suddenly I was a thing of bestial fury, stand- 

 ing with hands held up and clenched, rigid in a ges- 

 ture of impotent threatening, against the sky. 



For this striving, swift thing of light and beauty 

 was Nettie, and this was the man for whom I had 

 been betrayed ! 



In another moment I w^as running and stumbling, 

 revolver in hand, in quiet, unsusjiected pursuit 

 of them, through the soft and noiseless sand. 



tinued.) 



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