VI
All night a land-breeze swept overhead from the north, as if streaming down an interminable valley. Despite his weariness, he slept ill; his dreams were a riot of pictures,—the firs, the gulls, the witch-fire, Helen looking away from him at the sea, the boy rising, in fear, against the torchlight,—and through it all a troubled half-remembrance of the blow he had struck with the oar. When he woke, at sunrise, the wind had fallen. The house still lay drowned in sleep. He dressed, stole downstairs, and looked about for his cap, which he had left there two nights before. It was not to be found. He did not know then that Helen had taken it to her room, laughed and cried and committed pretty follies over it, and at last gone to sleep, intending to leave it in the hall before he should be up. So he went outdoors bareheaded.
The wind had swept away with it all vestiges of summer, and brought in a pure dawn of uncompromising autumn. The night had drawn a sharp line between the seasons.
