aphanous draperies would have exposed her to no risk of a chill.
Lovers are like that, however, and had they not been so on this
occasion, I should have had no story to tell.

Like the exemplary swain he was, Dick arrived early at the
rendezvous,--that is to say, early in respect to the time agreed upon,
though, as a matter of fact, it was nearly eleven o'clock. There he lit
a cigarette, and approaching the heavy iron bars of the locked gate,
looked forth upon the peaceful scene beyond. It was a perfect night, the
harvest moon riding through fleecy cloud aloft, whilst the breaking of
the sea between the rocky points to right and left was soothing in its
gentle iteration. Dick had been on parade extremely early that morning,
and, tell it not in Gath! his eyes involuntarily closed. Starting awake
again, he saw with surprise that, though Alix had not yet come forward,
he was no longer alone. No! the sacred beach had been invaded, and a
female figure clad in light draperies was pacing slowly in the moonlight
betwixt himself and the distant rocks. Who on earth could she be, and
how had she got there? were the questions he asked himself, his first
sensation being one of annoyance at so unexpected and so ill-timed an
intrusion. But as the moments passed and the figure came more clearly
into view, impatience gave way to curiosity, and curiosity to something
like awe.

What he saw was the tall and slender form of a young girl whose hands
were clasped in front of her, and whose eyes were fixed on the ground in
a pensive, not to say sorrowful, attitude. Clear as was the moonlight,
at least in the intervals of the moon's passage through the broken
clouds, her features were not plainly visible; but her every movement
was instinct with grace. What could she be doing there? Under other
circumstances, possibly Dick might have felt inclined to pass the gate
and himself step forth on to the sands. But, besides that the gate was
locked, he gradually became conscious of a singular delicacy or
unwillingness to intrude upon the privacy of this solitary,
inexplicable, and impressive figure. He was content, therefore, to watch
her noiseless progress, and, as he did so, even his untrained masculine
eye seemed to note something unusual--out of date, it might be--in the
fashion of her garments. So perhaps might some old-world portrait have
appeared, had it stept down from its frame against the wall. This,
however, stirred him little. What he was