ils were bowing and curtseying to one another with
all ceremony, like ghosts at a stately ball. To the east and south lay
the sea, vacant, except that on the eastern verge stood a palace of
cloud, the portals of which were luminous with the light from within,
and now they were thrown open with a golden flash, and yellow rays shot
forth into the upper heavens, spreading a clear green light through the
deep midnight of the sky where the other worlds wandered. Then the
yellow moon came from her palace, wrapping herself at first with a
mantle of golden mist, as if--Godiva-like--she shrank from loosening her
garments; but the need of the darkling earth pressed upon her, and she
dropped her covering and rode forth in nakedness.

Everything was more lovely now, for there was light to see the
loveliness. The bluff wind that came from the bosom of the sea seemed
only to tell of a vast silence and a world asleep. The rocky shore, with
its thin line of white breakers, stretched round to the west. About a
mile away there was a rugged headland, with some crags at its feet,
which had been broken off and rolled down into the sea by the Frost
Demon of bygone years. The smallest was farthest out, and wedged behind
it and sheltered by it was the black hulk of a wrecked vessel. This
outermost rock lay so that it broke the waves as they came against the
wreck, and each was thrown high in a white jet and curl of spray, and
fell with a low sob back into the darkness of the sea.

The curate turned and walked toward the headland on the cliff path where
he had walked a week before with Violetta. The cliffs were completely
desolate, except for some donkeys browsing here and there, their brown
hair silvered by the frost. There was a superstition in the town that
the place was haunted on moonlight nights by the spirit of a woman who
had perished in the wreck. It had been a French vessel, wrecked five
years before, and all on board were drowned--six men and one woman, the
wife of the skipper. They had all been buried in one grave in the little
cemetery that was on the top of the headland; and it was easy to see how
the superstition of the haunting came about, for as the curate watched
the spray on the rock near the wreck rise up in the moonlight and fall
back into the sea, he could almost make himself believe that he saw in
it the supple form of a woman with uplifted hands, praying heaven for
rescue.

The wind was pretty rough when he got to the