It was hot that morning in the unexpected sunshine. A girl dressed in cotton put her mouth to his ear. I’ll run you to the sea, she said, and her breasts jumped up and down as she raced in front of him, with her hair flying wild, to the edge of the sea that was not made of water and the small, thundering pebbles that broke in a million pieces as the dry sea moved in. Along the bright wrackline, from the horizon where the vast birds sailed like boats, from the four compass corners, bellying up through the weed-beds, melting from orient and tropic, surging through the ice hills and the whale grounds, through sunset and sunrise corridors, the salt gardens and the herring fields, whirlpool and rock pool, out of the trickle in the mountain, down the waterfalls, a white-faced sea of people, the terrible mortal number of the waves, all the centuries’ sea drenched in the hail before Christ, who suffered tomorrow’s storm wind, came in with the whole world’s voices on the endless beach. Come back, come back, the boy cried to the girl. She ran on unheeding over the sand and was lost among the sea. Now her face was a white drop of water in the horizontal rainfall, and her limbs were white as snow and lost in the white, walking tide. Now the heart in her breast was a small red bell that rang in a wave, her colourless hair fringed the spray, and her voice lapped over the flesh-and-bone water. He cried again, but she had mingled with the people moving in and out. Their tides were drawn by a grave moon that never lost an arc. Their long, sea gestures were deliberate, the flat hands beckoning, the heads uplifted, the eyes in the mask faces set in one direction. Oh where was she now in the sea? Among the white, walking, and the coral-eyed. Come back, come back. Darling, run out of the sea. Among the processional waves. The bell in her breast was ringing over the sand. He ran to the yellow foot of the dunes, calling over his shoulder. Run out of the sea. In the once-green water where the fishes swam, where the gulls rested, where the luminous stones were rubbed and rocked on the scales of the green bed, when ships puffed over the tradeways, and the mad, nameless animals came down to drink the salt. Among the measuring people. Oh where was she now? The sea was lost behind the dunes. He stumbled on over sand and sand-flowers like a blind boy in the sun. The sun dodged round his shoulders.