ter moral beauty? What a fool I was--but that
was how it was working out. Beauty be hanged! Monty was badly wrong
in proclaiming that nature was chiefly beautiful, and life on the
whole was good. And, if he were wrong, why, then there was no
further need to toil after a beauty of character to match the beauty
of seas and hills. Good heavens! Beauty in the Mudros Hills! They
were but homes of thirsty grass and dying thistles, dust and
torturing flies. These ideals of Monty's were vapoury. Why not throw
them up--throw up moral effort? I would. There was _not_ more
beauty--

It was at this moment that Monty himself stood in the tent door.

"Down, Rupert?" he asked. "What's the matter?"

I looked up into his eyes, and saw in them that inquiring sympathy
which could so quickly transfigure him from a lively friend into a
gentle priest.

"Oh, nothing," I said. I was in no mood just now to tell him
anything. "Bored, that's all."

And then I looked round, and noticed that the tent was full of a
violet light. It was as if limelight had been turned on from behind
a violet glass.

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "The air's all coloured!"

"Yes," said he, "I was coming to tell you to look at the sunset.
It's bad old Mudros's one good deed."

Out to the tent door I went, and looked over the harbour to the
western shores. And there, very rapidly, the ball of the sun was
going down behind the hills with an affair of gold and crimson
lights, while all the hills were violet. The colour was so strong
that it came out and flushed with violet the black hulls of the
ships. And they, strangely motionless, lay mirrored in a water of
white and gold.

"Listen!" said Monty.

For from all the camps the British bugles were singing the sad call
of "Retreat"; the French trumpets wailing "Sun-down," and their
rifles firing a rapid fusillade to speed the departing day.
Meanwhile the heat had died into a refreshing coolness; the wind had
dropped, leaving the dust undisturbed on the ground; and the flies
were roosting in the tops of the tents.

Very soon it was quite dark. Then everything lit up: first, the
camps on the hills, their innumerable hurricane-lamps resembling the
lights of great cities; then, the vessels in the bay--and, in the
quiet of the windless evening, their bells, telling the hour, came
clearly over the water. The long hulls of the hospital ships marked
themselves off by rows of green lights and large, luminous red
crosses.