The holiday-makers stared dully at the four figures in
evening dress looking out above their heads; they had other things than
these to think of, becoming more and more silent as the night grew dark.
The four young people too were rather silent. There was something in
this warm night, with its sighing, and its darkness, and its stars, that
was not favourable to talk, so that presently they split into couples,
drifting a little apart.
Standing there, gripping the wall, it seemed to Harbinger that there
were no words left in the world. Not even his worst enemy could have
called this young man romantic; yet that figure beside him, the gleam
of her neck and her pale cheek in the dark, gave him perhaps the most
poignant glimpse of mystery that he had ever had. His mind, essentially
that of a man of affairs, by nature and by habit at home amongst the
material aspects of things, was but gropingly conscious that here, in
this dark night, and the dark sea, and the pale figure of this
girl whose heart was dark to him and secret, there was perhaps
something--yes, something--which surpassed the confines of his
philosophy, something beckoning him on out of his snug compound into the
desert of divinity. If so, it was soon gone in the aching of his senses
at the scent of her hair, and the longing to escape from this weird
silence.
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