we could
watch the darkness creeping over the sea and the lagoon. There was no
pleasure here--but it was some way better than staying in our rooms and
letting the night creep upon us unawares. It seemed better to face it
and watch it, staring away into it with rather bright, wide-open
eyes....

The trees blurred on the lawns. The trunks faded until they seemed like
the trunks of ghost-trees, haunting that ancient shore. It was no longer
possible to distinguish twig from twig where the branches overlapped.

The green grass became a strange, dusky blue; the gray sand of the shore
whitened; the blue-green waters turned to ink except for their
silver-white caps of foam. Watching closely, our eyes gradually adjusted
themselves to the fading light, conveying the impression that the
twilight was of unusual length. Perhaps we didn't quite know when the
twilight ended and the night began.

The usual twilight sounds reached us with particular vividness from the
lagoon and the forest and the shore. We heard the plover, as ever; and
deeper voices--doubtless those of passing sea-birds, mingled with
theirs. But the sounds came intermittently, sharp and penetrating out of
the darkness and the silence, and they always startled us a little.
Sometimes the thickets rustled in the gardens--little, hushed noises
none of us pretended to hear. A frog croaked, and the hushed little
wind creaked the tree-limbs together. Once some wild creature--possibly
a wildcat, but more likely a great owl--filled the night with his weird,
long-drawn cry. We all turned, and Van Hope, sitting near by, smiled
wanly in the gloom.

Darkness had already swept the verandas, and Van Hope's was the only
face I could see. The others were already blurred, and even their forms
were mere dark blotches of shadow. A vague count showed that there was
six of us here--and I was suddenly rather startled by the thought that I
didn't know just who they were. The group had changed from time to time
throughout the evening, some of the men had gone and others had taken
their chairs, and now the darkness concealed their identities. It
shouldn't have made any difference, yet I found myself dwelling, with a
strange persistency, on the subject.

The reason got down to the simple fact that, in this house of mystery,
a man instinctively wanted to keep track of all his fellows. He wanted
to know where they were and what they were doing. He found himself
worrying when one of them was