Judith, was dead, and everyone else had flown to other fields while he
alone was left among the ruins. Of all the old atmosphere Phoebe was
the only one remaining--little, soft, admiring Phoebe, whom he had
hardly noticed all this past winter.

Ishmael was one of those to whom the ending even of a not altogether
congenial atmosphere was fraught with sadness; had he been left to
himself he would probably never have moved far out of an accustomed
circle, thus much of the peasant was potent in his blood. Now he felt,
with the finality of youth, that everything had been stripped from
around him, and that no new scheme of life formed itself before his
eyes.

When he came to the top of the cliff above his plateau he turned off
down the narrow goat-track that led to it, and when there flung himself
on his face upon the turf, chin on hands, and brooded. His thoughts took
no definite shape; rather were they the vague unsettled desires for he
knew not what. Just that "something," anything, would happen.

He lay staring at the grass, covered with tiny blossoms of self-heal and
rest-harrow: behind and a hundred feet below him the sea swirled, its
deep peacock hue patterned with milky wreaths of foam; half around him
reared a semi-circle of pale cliff. He stared at the miniature forest of
blade and leaf beneath his eyes, and could hear faint rustlings as tiny
insects thrust their way through it or climbed aimlessly up stalks that
only led them into air. On the fragile curve of a feathery bent a pair
of Spotted Burnet moths were at their mating--lovely creatures of the
iridescent green of lapis-lazuli, their folded wings of greyer green
decorated with splashes of purest crimson, their long glossy antennæ
shining in the sunlight. Immobile they clung together for what must have