midday
Early the next morning Rafael was out rowing in the bay , the play-ground of his childhood . Notwithstanding the shorn and sunken aspect of the hills , his delight at being there again was indescribable . Indescribable because of the loneliness and stillness : no one came to disturb him . After having lived for many years in large towns , to find oneself alone in a Norwegian bay is like leaving a noisy market-place at midday and passing into a high vaulted church where no sound penetrates from without , and where only one 's own footstep breaks the silence . Holiness , purification , abstraction , devotion , but in such light and freedom as no church possesses . The lapse of time , the past were forgotten ; it was as though he had never been away , as though no other place had ever known him . Indescribable , for the intensity of his feelings surpassed anything that he had hitherto known .