wo
people are not to be discovered anywhere.

Yet they are not so distant as they seem. Desmond has led Monica to a
rather higher spot, where the desired scene can be more vividly beheld,
and where too they can be--oh, blessed thought!--_alone_.

Through a belt of dark-green fir-trees, whose pale tips are touched with
silver by the moon, can be seen the limitless ocean, lying in restless
waiting in the bay below.

A sort of enforced tranquillity has fallen upon it,--a troubled
calm,--belied by the hoarse, sullen roar that rises now and again from
its depths, as when some larger death-wave breaks its bounds, and,
rushing inland, rolls with angry violence up the beach. Soft white
crests lie upon the great sea's bosom, tossing idly hither and thither,
glinting and trembling beneath the moon's rays, as though reluctantly
subdued by its cold influence.

Across the whole expanse of the water a bright path is flung, that has
its birth in heaven, yet deigns to accept a resting-place on earth,--a
transitory rest, for there in the far distance on the horizon, where the
dull grays of sea and sky have mingled, it has joined them, and seems
again to have laid hold of its earliest home.

The birds are asleep in their sea-bound nests; the wind has died away.
There is nothing to break the exquisite stillness of the night, save the
monotonous beating of the waves against the rocks, and the faint
rippling murmur of a streamlet in the ash-grove.

The whole scene is so rich with a beauty mystical and idealistic that
Monica draws instinctively nearer to Desmond, with that desire for
sympathy common to the satisfied soul, and stirs her hand in his.

Here, perhaps, it will be as well to mention, once for all, that
whenever I give you to understand that Desmond is alone with Monica you
are also to understand, without the telling, that he has her hand in
his. What pleasure there can be for two people in standing, or sitting,
or driving, as the case may be, for _hours_, palm to palm (this is how
the poetical one expresses it), I leave all true lovers to declare. I
only know for certain that it is a trick common to every one of them,
rich and poor, high and low. I suppose there is consolation in the
touch,--a sensation of nearness. I know, indeed, one young woman who
assured me her principal reason for marrying Fred in a hurry (Fred was
her husband) lay in the fact that she feared if she didn't she would
grow left-handed, as he was always