e nothing about her except that she loved
him and his father, and was beautiful. His callow ignorance--he had not
even had the advantage of the War, like nearly everybody else!--made him
small in his own eyes.

That night, from the balcony of his bedroom, he gazed down on the roof
of the town--as if inlaid with honeycomb of jet, ivory, and gold; and,
long after, he lay awake, listening to the cry of the sentry as the
hours struck, and forming in his head these lines:

"Voice in the night crying, down in the old sleeping
Spanish city darkened under her white stars!

"What says the voice-its clear-lingering anguish?
Just the watchman, telling his dateless tale of safety?
Just a road-man, flinging to the moon his song?

"No! Tis one deprived, whose lover's heart is weeping,
Just his cry: 'How long?'"

The word "deprived" seemed to him cold and unsatisfactory, but
"bereaved" was too final, and no other word of two syllables short-long
came to him, which would enable him to keep "whose lover's heart is
weeping." It was past two by the time he had finished it, and past
three before he went to sleep, having said it over to himself at least
twenty-four times. Next day he wrote it out and enclosed it in one of
those letters to Fleur which he always finished before he went down, so
as to have his mind free and companionable.

About noon that same day, on the tiled terrace of their hotel, he felt a
sudden dull pain in the back of his head, a queer sensation in the eyes,
and sickness. The sun had touched him too affectionately. The next three
days were passed in semi-darkness, and a dulled, aching indifference to
all except the feel of ice on his forehead and his mother's smile. She
never moved from his room, never relaxed her noiseless vigilance, which
seemed to Jon angelic. But there were moments when he was extremely
sorry for himself, and wished terribly that Fleur could see him. Several
times he took a poignant imaginary leave of her and of the earth, tears
oozing out of his eyes. He even prepared the message he would send to
her by his mother--who would regret to her dying day that she had ever
sought to separate them--his poor mother! He was not slow, however, in
perceiving that he had now his excuse for going home.

Toward half-past six each evening came a "gasgacha" of bells--a cascade
of tumbling chimes, mounting from the city below and falling back chime
on chime. After lis