alking to a man
under the full light of a lamp. Mary remarked that the girl was
exquisitely pretty. She wanted him to say that she herself was a
thousandfold prettier. But he did not say it; and she led him off the
front rather sulkily, taking him over a drawbridge and on to the quay
that bisected the harbour. They strolled about amid the piles of
timber and along more quays and drawbridges, now and again
encountering other promenaders in the soft darkness. For awhile Morgan
found the stillness delicious, almost forgetting the existence of his
companion. But very soon she recommenced her tactics, making
statements that credited him--by implication--with flirtations galore,
and hinting at vast experience on her own part and lovers by the
score. Certainly she laid pitfalls by the score, but she was so
invariably unsuccessful that she could not help at last giving
expression to her vexation.

"You're the first man I've ever known," she said frankly, "who didn't
think me beautiful."

He recognised he had got a whiff of his Cleo there, but, just as he
was about to deliver the polite reply to which she had forced him,
they happened to turn round the side of a great wood-stack and, at the
same moment, an impressive chorus of voices floated softly across the
night. They were now on a quay that ran across the harbour, parallel
with the cliffs that rose at the back of it. To right and left were
the massed silhouettes of shipping and small craft, of odd
superannuated sailing vessels and huge-funnelled steamers, and in the
intervening waters were moored half a dozen Russian gun-boats. On the
largest of these a sailors' service was being held. They could hear
the priest's sweet voice raised in exhortation, and then again rose
the sailors' chant.

Morgan listened enraptured. The velvety surface of the water,
traversed here and there by glistering bars, the subdued stars above,
the profound silence of the night, the strange whiteness of the cliff
beyond, rising in marked contrast to the dark line of dwellings at its
foot, save where the patches of green on its face showed as grey
stains in the darkness, the looming hulls and intertangled masts and
rigging, the mystic scattered lights of the harbour--the enchantment
of all entered into his spirit, attuned to this beautiful singing of
the vespers.

And then, of a sudden, a bugle-call rang out, clear and far-reaching,
from the great barracks of the Western heights; instinct in its