.

The first of my nights after leaving the town was spent on a shaggy
grass patch on a cliff, under three old twisted yew trees. Underfoot
was an abundance of wild lavender and the air was laden with the
scent. I am now at New Athos monastery, ten miles from Sukhum, and am
writing this in the cell that the hospitable monks have given me. My
last night was in a deep cavern at the base of a high rock on a desert
shore.

The first night was warm and gentle, though it was followed by several
that were stormy. Wrapped in my rug I felt not a shiver of cold, even
at dawn. As I lay at my ease, I looked out over the far southern sea
sinking to sleep in the dusk. The glistening and sparkling of the
water passed away--the sea became a great bale of grey--blue silk,
soft, smooth, dreamy, like the garment of a sorceress queen.

I slipped into sleep and slipped out again as easily as one goes from
one room to another, sometimes sleeping one hour or half an hour at
a time, or more often one moment asleep, one moment awake, like the
movement of a boat on the waves.

Once when I wakened, I started at an unforeseen phenomenon. The moon
in her youth was riding over the sea as bright as it is possible to
be, and down below her she wrote upon the waves and expressed herself
in new variety, a long splash of lemon-coloured light over the placid
ocean, a dream picture, something of magic.

It was a marvellous sight, something of that which is indicated in
pictures, but which one cannot recognise as belonging to the world
of truth--something impressionistic. To waken to see something so
beautiful is to waken for the first time, it is verily to be in part
born; for therein the soul becomes aware of something it had not
previously imagined: looking into the mirror of Nature, it sees itself
anew.

Where my sleeping-place would be had been a secret, and this was the
mystery in it, the further secret. I was definitely aware even on my
first night out that I had entered a new world.

To sleep, to wake and find the moon still dreaming, to see the moon's
dream in the water, to sleep again and wake, so--till the dawn. Such
was my night under the old yews, the first spent with these southern
stars on a long vagabondage.

II

How different was last night, how full of weariness after heavy
tramping through leagues of loose stones. I had been tramping from
desolate Cape Pitsoonda over miles and miles of sea holly and scrub
through a district