own to him, as secret, as that Phoenician
past was to the town down there, whose cocks crowed and whose children
played and clamoured so gaily, day in, day out. He felt aggrieved that
she should know all about him and he 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 honey-comb 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 roadman, 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 tha