ence of Love.
[Footnote]

[Footnote: This poem of Philip Aylwin's appears now in the present
writer's volume, _The Coming of Love_.]

XIV

SINFI'S COUP DE THEATRE

I

Weeks passed by. I visited all the scenes that were in the least
degree associated with Winnie.

The two places nearest to me--Fairy Glen and the Swallow Falls--which
I had always hitherto avoided on account of their being the
favourite haunts of tourists--I left to the last, because I
specially desired to see them by moonlight. With regard to Fairy
Glen, I had often heard Winnie say how she used to go there by
moonlight and imagine the Tylwyth Teg or the fairy scenes of the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_ which I had told her of long ago--imagine
them so vividly that she could actually see, on a certain projecting
rock in the cliffs that enclose the dell, the figure of Titania
dressed in green, with a wreath of leaves round her head. And with
regard to the Swallow Falls, I remembered only too well her telling
me, on the night of the landslip, the Welsh legend of Sir John Wynn,
who died in the seventeenth century, and whose ghost, imprisoned at
the bottom of the Falls on account of his ill deeds in the flesh, was
heard to shriek amid the din of the waters. On that fatal night she
told me that on certain rare occasions, when the moon shines straight
down the chasm, the wail will become an agonised shriek. I had often
wondered what natural sound this was which could afford such pabulum
to my old foe, Superstition. So one night, when the moon was shining
brilliantly--so brilliantly that the light seemed very little
feebler than that of day--I walked in the direction of the Swallow
Falls.

Being afraid that I should not get much privacy at the Falls, I
started late. But I came upon only three or four people on the road.
I had forgotten that my own passion for moonlight was entirely a
Romany inheritance. I had forgotten that a family of English
tourists will carefully pull down the blinds and close the shutters,
in order to enjoy the luxury of candlelight, lamp-light, or gas,
when a Romany will throw wide open the tent's mouth to enjoy the
light he loves most of all--'chonesko dood,' as he calls the
moonlight. As I approached the Swallow Falls Hotel, I lingered to
let my fancy feast in anticipation on the lovely spectacle that
awaited me. When I turned into the wood I encountered only one
person, a lady, and she hurried back to the hotel as soon