High in the heavens floated a
bright half-moon, across whose face the little white-edged clouds
drifted in quick succession, throwing their gigantic shadows to the
world beneath. All silver was the sleeping sea where the moonlight fell
upon it, and when this was eclipsed, then it was all jet. To the right
and left, up to the very borders of the cliff, lay the soft wreaths
of roke or land-fog, covering the earth as with a cloak of down, but
pierced here and there by the dim and towering shapes of trees. Yet
although these curling wreaths of mist hung on the edges of the cliff
like white water about to fall, they never fell, since clear to the
sight, though separated from them by a gulf of translucent blackness,
lay the yellow belt of sand up which, inch by inch, the tide was
creeping.

And the air--no wind stirred it, though the wind was at work aloft--it
was still and bright as crystal, and crisp and cold as new-iced wine,
for the first autumn frost was falling.

They stood for a few moments looking at all these wonderful beauties
of the mysterious night--which dwellers in the country so rarely
appreciate, because to them they are common, daily things--and listening
to the soft, long-drawn murmuring of the sea upon the shingle. Then they
went forward to the edge of the cliff, but although Morris threw the fur
rug over it Mary did not seat herself in the comfortable-looking deck
chair. Her desire for repose had departed. She preferred to lean upon
the low grey wall in whose crannies grew lichens, tiny ferns, and, in
their season, harebells and wallflowers. Morris came and leant at her
side; for a while they both stared at the sea.

"Pray, are you making up poetry?" she inquired at last.

"Why do you ask such silly questions?" he answered, not without
indignation.

"Because you keep muttering to yourself, and I thought that you were
trying to get the lines to scan. Also the sea, and the sky, and the
night suggest poetry, don't they?"

Morris turned his head and looked at her.

"_You_ suggest it," he said, with desperate earnestness, "in all that
shining white, especially when the moon goes in. Then you look like a
beautiful spirit new lit upon the edge of the world."

At first Mary was pleased, the compliment was obvious, and, coming from
Morris, great. She had never heard him say so much as that before. Then
she thought an instant, and the echo of the word "spirit" came back to
her mind, and jarred upon it with