Now the day is ending, and the sun goes down behind the hills at Yalta, the mist bank over the southern horizon catches the reflection of true sunset tints, and transmits them to the velvety water, full of light-rings.  I have been sitting on a pleasure seat on the sand all the afternoon, and now I go to the end of the long pier.  There one may see another vision of the mystery of the day, for the sea-waves are full of living autumn colours, of luminous withered leaves and faded rose petals; they are still living velvet, the night garment of a queen.  Black ducks are swimming mysteriously on the glowing dusky water.

In a moment, however, the scene has changed and the colours have been withdrawn.  The presence in the world, the queen whom we call Day, has passed over the waves and disappeared; not even a fold of the long train of her dress is visible.

Some one has lighted a Roman candle at the far end of the pier, as a signal to a steamer whose white and red lanterns have just been descried upon the dark horizon.  It is night:  the day is over.

VIII

SUNSET FROM THE GATE OF BAIDARI

It was at the Gate of Baidari in the Crimea on the shortest day of the year that I saw the most wonderful sunset I have ever known, and entered most completely into the spirit of the dark, quiet night.

It was another vision of the sea, a presentment of the sea’s question in a new light.

A mild December afternoon.  I had been some days wandering across pleasant tree-brown valleys and immense hollows mountain-walled.  In the winter silence there was no murmur of the ocean, not even was there saltness in the air.  I was out of the sight of the sea and had been so for several days.  But this afternoon I climbed by a long road where were many berberry bushes vermilion with their berries, up to the pass over the hills, and there all at once by surprise, without the least expecting it, at a turn of the road I had a revelation of the whole sea.

It was a ravishment of the eyes, a scene on which one looks, at which one stares.  The road came suddenly to a precipice, and sheer down, two thousand feet below, the waves foamed forward on the rocks, and from the foam to the remote horizon lay the mysterious sleeping sea—­no, not sleeping, but rather causing all else to sleep in its presence, for it was full of serpent lines all moving toward the shore.  The whole wild mountainous Crimean shore sat before the sea and dreamed.

And I realised slowly all that was in the evening.  Below me lay the white tortuous road leading downward to the shore in coils, and clothing the road, the many woods, all hoary white because the sharp sea-breeze had breathed on them.  Evening had long since settled on the road and on the wintry trees; it lay also about the grey temple which the Russians have put up on one of the platforms of the lower cliffs.  The church looked so compact and small down below me that it seemed one could have held it in the palm of the hand.  It was sunset, but the sky was full of blue-grey colour.  The whole South caught a radiance from the hidden West and the sea was grey.