no use. I must get up. I struck a light, and in a moment was deep
in the composition of a fiery sonnet. It was evidently that which had
caused all the phosphorescence. But a sonnet is a mere pill-box. It holds
nothing. A mere cockleshell. And, oh! the raging sea it could not hold!
Besides, being confessedly an art-form, duly licensed to lie, it is apt to
be misunderstood. It could not say in plain English, 'Meet me at the pier
to-morrow at three in the afternoon'; it could make no assignation nearer
than the Isles of the Blest, 'after life's fitful fever.' Therefore, it
seemed well to add a postscript to that effect in prose.

And then, how was she to receive it? Needless to say, there was nothing to
be hoped from the post; and I should have said before that Tyre and Sidon
face each other on opposite sides of the river, and that my home was in
Sidon, three miles from the ferry.

Likewise, it was now nearing three in the morning. Just time to catch the
half-past three boat, run up to the theatre, a mile away, and meet the
return boat. So down down through the creaking house, gingerly, as though
I were a Jason picking my way among the coils of the sleeping dragon. Soon
I was shooting along the phantom streets, like Mercury on a message
through Hades.

At last the river came in sight, growing slate-colour in the earliest
dawn. I could see the boat nuzzling up against the pier, and snoring in
its sleep. I said to myself that this was Styx and the fare an obolus. As
I jumped on board, with hot face and hotter heart, Charon clicked his
signal to the engines, the boat slowly snuffled itself half awake, and we
shoved out into the sleepy water.

As we crossed, the light grew, and the gas-lamps of Tyre beaconed with
fading gleam. Overhead began a restlessness in the clouds, as of a giant
drowsily shuffling off some of his bedclothes; but as yet he slept, and
only the silver bosom of his spouse the moon was uncovered.

When we landed, the streets of Tyre were already light, but empty: as
though they had got up early to meet some one who had not arrived. I sped
through them like a seagull that has the harbour to itself, and was not
long in reaching the theatre. How desolate the playbills looked that had
been so companionable but two or three hours before. And there was her
photograph! Surely it was an omen. Ah, my angel! See, I am bringing you my
heart in a song 'All my heart in this my singing!'

I dropped the letter into th