eird and fitful sounds that seemed to be sighed forth
from the bosom of the earth.

"It is a pity," she said, "that we cannot pass through this gateway
into paradise without descending to earth again."

"I don't believe you are half as tired of life as you say," he
answered with an impatient movement of his head. "You may not shrink
from death as I do, or enjoy life so keenly, but isn't it a good thing
to be alive to-night? Isn't it fine to be a mile or so above the rest
of humanity and the deadly conventionalities? Aren't you glad you
came?"

She did not answer, but presently said dreamily, "Suppose that plain
was the sea."

"It isn't hard to suppose," he answered. "I have seen the Pacific when
it looked just so."

"Oh, no," she said quickly. "Nothing is like the sea but itself. You
will never persuade me that I love the mountains so well. And the
plains,--just imagine if all that gray green silver were gray blue,
with here and there a gathering crest of foam, racing to break in
spray about these mountains--"

"Why, look," he said, drawing her a little to one side, "there is your
liquid blue, with its white crest moving toward us. Could the real sea
look more wonderful than that? It is blotting out everything. Now it
recedes,--was it not real?"

She started to her feet. "This is a very strange night," she said
irrelevantly, in a rather strained voice. "Listen,--and see how many
birds are flying about us; I never saw them fly so at night. What does
it mean?"

They stood together, looking at each other with startled faces. The
whole mountain, all the mountains, seemed to be alive and trembling
under them. Overhead thousands of birds wheeled and screamed with
terror in their mingled outcries. The little creeping things scuttled
away up the mountain. The silver-blue wave widened and spread over the
plain from north to south, and the air was full of a dull, terrible
roar, as if the fountains of the great deep had broken up, and a
thousand white-crested waves rushed toward the hapless city before
them. They covered it, and with a wild jangle of bells, faintly
audible over the tumult, it sank out of sight, all the gleaming,
dancing lights disappearing in an instant. The white crests came on
and broke about the mountains, and receded and came on again with a
deafening roar. Then the crust of the earth between the mountain range
and the spot where the city had been, seemed to crack like a bit of
dried orange peel, a