He span away the last shell and turned his back to the sea. The sun was rising swiftly and he saw that he was standing at the edge of a meadow, the grasses growing from sand, and in the grass myriad small flowers he had not been aware of when he came the first time, that must have been closed against the weather, the chill of evening. Now, discovered by the sun, they ignited, one by one. The yellow and the white, the gold and the red, so that he seemed to be looking across a field of small lights afloat on the shallow water of morning shadow. Under his bare feet the ground was fibrous with a structure of endless soft branchings. It was odd to take in the world through his feet, the soles as sensitive, as inquisitive as a tongue. It was like that game children and lovers play, sketching words on each other’s back with a finger, half caress, half riddle. His movement woke a bee, sent it zagging, almost too heavy for flight, over the tips of the flowers. He apologised, out loud, in high Castilian.

He considered how he would describe all this to one who had not seen it—that one being all the world but himself. Start with the flowers? With the sea? With the sun whose warmth he could feel now against his right cheek? He had the desire to pray but let his prayer take the form of a slow walking over flowers. Someone, he thought, someone should have taught me how to meet joy better. He raised his arms and tried moving in a dance, had it for a moment, a slow, courtly turning, his feet brushing the grasses, the stems, the petals. Then he dropped his arms in a fit of laughter, took off his coat, his jacket (how ragged he’d become!) and lay down, heavy with gratitude, heavy too with a month of nights broken by foxes and owls, and by other creatures—men perhaps—less easily known.