All the sentiment in him
centred round the memory of the little girl, and idealized her
loveliness. The first warm weather of the year, the exquisite but
fugitive beauties of the spring, lent emphasis to his mood, and because
his home was not a soil congenial to the growth of any but the more
ordinary sentiments, he began at this time to seek in natural solitudes
a more fitting environment for his musings. More than once, in the days
that immediately followed, he sought by daylight the spot where, in the
darkness, he had seen the child thrown into the sea. It soon occurred to
him to make an epitaph for her, and carve it in the cliff over which she
was thrown. In the noon-day hours in which his father rested, he worked
at this task, and grew to feel at home in the place and its
surroundings.
The earth in this place, as in others, showed red, the colour of red
jasper, wherever its face was not covered by green grass or blue water.
Just here, where the mother had sought out a precipice under which the
tide lay deep, there was a natural water-wall of red sandstone, rubbed
and corrugated by the waves. This wall of rock extended but a little
way, and ended in a sharp jutting point.
The little island that stood out toward the open sea had sands of red
gold; level it was and covered with green bushes, its sandy beach
surrounding it like a ring.
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