At last, in a paroxysm of unrest, he rose, hastily dressed
himself, stole down stairs, and made his way out into the cool air of
the night.
It could not be the coming dawn that revealed to him the outlines of
the shore and the mountains and the loch? The moon had already sunk in
the south-west: not from her came that strange clearness by which all
these objects were defined. Then the young man bethought him of what
Sheila had said of the twilight in these latitudes, and, turning to
the north, he saw there a pale glow which looked as if it were the
last faint traces of some former sunset. All over the rest of the
heavens something of the same metallic clearness reigned, so that the
stars were pale, and a gray hue lay over the sea, and over the island,
the white bays, the black rocks and the valleys, in which lay a
scarcely perceptible mist.
He left the house and went vaguely down to the sea. The cold air,
scented strongly with the seaweed, blew about him, and was sweet and
fresh on the lips and the forehead. How strange was the monotonous
sound of the waves, mournful and distant, like the sound in a
seashell! That alone spoke in the awful stillness of the night, and
it seemed to be telling of those things which the silent stars and the
silent hills had looked down on for ages and ages.
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