It was past believing. It was altogether beyond him. He lay, with his eyes glued to the point round which they had gone, stupid with the wonder of it.
They had actually given it up—for to-day, at least, and gone back! He cudgelled his brains for the meaning of it all, till they grew dull and weary with futile thinking.
Perhaps Nance and the Vicar and the Sénéchal had prevailed after all! Perhaps something had turned up at last to prove to the Sark men their misjudgment! Perhaps—well, any way, it was good to be left alone.
He lay there, laxed with the over-strain of all this upsetting, but rejoicing placidly in this one more day of life.
He felt like one granted a day's respite as he stands on the scaffold with the rope round his neck.
Never had the sun shone so brightly. Never had the silver sea danced so merrily. It might be the last he would see of them.
And the sun wheeled on towards Guernsey, and made his deliberate preparations for a setting beyond the ordinary; for the sun, you must know, takes a very special pride in showing the great cliffs of Sark what he can do in the way of transformation scenes and most transcendent colouring.
And Stephen Gard lay there under the ridge on L'Etat, with the wonder and beauty of it all in his face and in his heart, and said to himself that it was probably the last sunset he would ever see, and he was glad to have seen it at its best.
He had a vague idea that heaven would be something like that—tenderly soft and beautiful, and glowing with radiances of unearthly splendour, which whispered to weary hearts of the peace and joy that lay beyond, and gently called them home to rest.
His theology was, without doubt, of the most elemental and objective, and would not have carried him any great lengths in these days; but, for the time being, at all events, it lifted its possessor to a plane of thought above his usual, and tended to quietness and peace of mind.