struck home to his memory with a shock of pain, and
a feverish dread that longed yet feared to find itself realised. To and
fro--to and fro--he paced the terraced walk, and again and again his
eyes sought that long line of light above his head.

There was a strange stillness in the brooding air--that mysterious hush,
which is the music of night's gentle footsteps, and insensibly its
soothing influence stole over the unquiet of his restless thoughts--the
warring powers of soul and sense grew silent and at rest.

Then something--a sound sweet as song--yet without the vibratory passion
of a human voice--seemed to float out of the darkness and hold his ear
enchained like a spell. It was the divinest beauty of music, divinely
interpreted, and it seemed to him as he listened that all the discord
and woe and misery that oppressed his earthly senses, disappeared and
died away into the very perfection of peace.

He stood there quite silent--quite motionless--waiting, so it seemed to
himself, for some fuller revelation to which these exquisite sounds were
but a prelude.

It was a matter of no surprise when he quietly lifted his dreamy glance
to the stone balcony above, and saw there, in the soft glow of light
from the rooms beyond, the fair form of the woman he had expected to
see.

A faint tremor of fear and apprehension thrilled his heart, but it died
away as a low remembered voice stole through the space that parted him
from a visible form he had never thought to see again.

"I told you we should meet. But I scarcely thought it would be so soon.
Will you come up here, or shall I join you?"

The voice and greeting roused him. He bared his head and bent low to
the speaker in a deeper homage than that of conventional courtesy.

"Is it really you, Princess? And may I be permitted to join you?"

The mute sign of assent showed him also a flight of steps leading up
from the terrace to the balcony. A moment, and he was by her side.

No ordinary greeting passed between them. Perhaps none could have
conveyed what that long silent gaze did; seeming to go straight to the
heart of each, full of memories that time had softened, but sad with the
sadness that is in all deep human love.

"A strange meeting-place," she said. "Yet why more strange than the
mountains of the East, or the lonely plains of the Desert, the steppes
of Russia, or the house-tops of Damascus?"

"You read my thoughts, as ever," he said. "I must conf