For Robert Moffat it is a matter of a goddess, though he is unable in his simplicity of reasoning to conceptualize such a notion. He imagines his goddess, not symbolically as a lodestone -- a ruling passion in a blind hierarchy of moldy tradition, but literally. He strokes his great graying beard as he peers across the bay. From his vantage in the topmost room of the Cape May light, where he eats and sleeps, he can see the house, a mansard-roofed smear against the moon. It stands on a spit of land at the tip of a bluff over which the sea darts and swells and sometimes soars, and he watches it till the fog thickens sensibly and the moon fades and then vanishes beneath a wilderness of clouds. Except that he is standing upright, Robert no longer knows what is up or down, east or west. He turns from the tall, many-layered windows that rattle in the wind and lumbers up the circular iron stairway to light the tower lamp and to signal the arrival of the fog with one-two-three long blasts of the horn. What might seem like comfort to some only mourns the emptiness and loss of those in pain. Robert descends and pours himself a large draught of whiskey and lights his pipe. Glancing toward the windows, he is relieved he can no longer see the house. Again, he turns away and seats himself before his fire. He lays his head back. His reflections wander in shadowy, shifting currents of awareness, and he finally comes to a central truth: It is not fitting that a man should see so far or be so high. A sensible man stays in the thick of things, where he knows the world as it really is, not as he wishes it to be. Up here with the sea birds and the angels, a man might imagine all kinds of things -- stubborn, wayward things he should not be thinking. A man should not place himself so high.

Robert has not attended his telescope in some minutes, and he rises tiredly to do so. He appreciates his work and his isolation, but more and more, he finds himself approaching the work, at least, with a fair amount of disinterest. He observes that Delaware Sound, silvered by the soft light from the tower lamp, is clear of sails as far as he can see, then trains his glass north and eastward on the intracoastal waters and southward to the open sea. Robert checks his compass. His headings are correct. He swings the glass and his view sweeps the bay. No sail is visible on the rising, wind-dashed waters. This is good, he tells himself. This is good. No vessel should be a'sea on a night like this. He logs his observations and resumes his seat and his whiskey. Robert gazes into his fire and finally picks up the neat parcel of notes, wrapped in ribbon, which he keeps always on the table near his chair. He does not read them though, preferring this night merely to hold them. Before long he finds himself dozing. And his dreams are of her, the authoress of those pretty testimonies. She comes to him from across the bay, from across time, arms beckoning, and she calls his name, and smiles and laughs and gazes into his eyes in such a loving, knowing fashion that his body trembles and his heart tips in his breast. He allows her love to fill him, for if he tries to grasp it, he will become pained and terrified of its loss. And so his goddess caresses his soul and purifies his senses.

The horn! He has not signaled the fog for who knows how long. Robert lurches awake. He climbs the circular staircase and pulls the heavy cord attached to the signal. Two and then three times it sounds. Robert descends again into his small parlor. He re-lights his pipe, then leans down, picking up the bundle of letters that had fallen at his feet. He smiles at how quickly we abandon sweetness when duty calls. And Robert Moffat knows his duty. He looks once more toward the windows that overlook the bay. The glass echoes many layers of a fire-lit reflection, and each layer is the same-- a ghostly old man with a great graying beard, a smoldering pipe, and a packet of ribbon-tied memories.