To-day, however, he was in no mood for the infinite; the finite was quite sufficient for him, so he amused himself by looking steadily at the shining dark surface of some bilge water which lay by the tarred keel of the boat, and trying to imagine that he would see visions in it, as the little Cairo boys see them in a drop of ink.
He had tested this often, and knew that they did see strange things, just as Helen apparently had seen the fire on Cam's point in the crystal. Truly there were many mysteries!
It was, of course, not hard to conjure up Aura's face, or see her seated in the sheep shelter listening to the bird, or standing in the moonlight among the cedar shadows on the lawn holding out the sovereign, or on her knees beside the little purple iris while the sphinx looked down on her.
But beyond all these tricks of memory, what could he see? Nothing. Yet what was this? A wide stretch of blue--blue everywhere. Bah! it was only the reflection of the sky; it was the floor of heaven!
His eyes narrowed themselves from dreaminess to thought. It was strange that that inner eye, which could produce things from the past with such absolute accuracy, should be so helpless in regard to the present except in negation. It could make one forget that altogether.
As for the future? Truly the mind of man dreamt idly when it sought to discover what lay beyond; possibly because it sought to recognise itself in conditions in which Self should have been merged in something beyond Self.
So as he sat idly looking at the drop of dark water, he felt for a moment--aided, no doubt, by the opium in his cigarette!--as if he were sailing on over a sea that vibrated ceaselessly with a soft quiver which brought no sensation of light to his eyes, no sense of feeling to his touch, no sense of sound to his ears.
And the old Indian definition recurred to him--"A bubble upon the Ocean of Bliss."
The sharp rug of a running rope recalled him to the present; the loop of the sheet was slipping as the breeze freshened.
It was freshening indeed. Behind him lay quite a squall, crisping the ripples to little indignant waves, and over in the south-east a cloud, pale-grey but threatening, already showed as a widening arch from the horizon. One of the swift spring storms was coming up apace, and he must run for it for all he was worth. There was no more time for dreams; every ounce of the squall that goes before the storm must be made use of if he was to send his valentine.