the broad
corridor. "There will be moonlight there, and those people will
monopolise the terrace when they have finished dinner."

At the western end of the old monastery there is a broad open space,
between the buildings and the overhanging rocks, at the base of which
there is a deep recess, almost amounting to a cave, in which stands a
great black cross planted in a pedestal of whitewashed masonry. A few
steps lead up to it. As the moon rose higher the cross was in the
shadow, while the platform and the buildings were in the full light.

The two women ascended the steps and sat down upon a stone seat.

"What a night!" exclaimed the young girl softly.

Her mother silently bent her head, but neither spoke again for some
time. The moonlight before them was almost dazzling, and the air was
warm. Beyond the stone parapet, far below, the tideless sea was silent
and motionless under the moon. A crooked fig-tree, still leafless,
though the little figs were already shaped on it, cast its intricate
shadow upon the platform. Very far away, a boy was singing a slow minor
chant in a high voice. The peace was almost disquieting--there was
something intensely expectant in it, as though the night were in love,
and its heart beating.

Clare sat still, her hand upon her mother's thin wrist, her lips just
parted a little, her eyes wide and filled with moon-dreams. She had
almost lost herself in unworded fancies when her mother moved and spoke.

"I had quite forgotten a letter I was writing," she said. "I must finish
it. Stay here, and I will come back again presently."

She rose, and Clare watched her slim dark figure and the long black
shadow that moved with it across the platform towards the open door of
the hotel. But when it had disappeared the white fancies came flitting
back through the silent light, and in the shade the young eyes fixed
themselves quietly to meet the vision and see it all, and to keep it for
ever if she could.

She did not know what it was that she saw, but it was beautiful, and
what she felt was on a sudden as the realisation of something she had
dimly desired in vain. Yet in itself it was nothing realised; it was
perhaps only the certainty of longing for something all heart and no
name, and it was happiness to long for it. For the first intuition of
love is only an exquisite foretaste, a delight in itself, as far from
the bitter hunger of love starving as a girl's faintness is from a cruel
death. The