Suddenly, from somewhere not far distant among the gorse bushes, there came a sound.  She stopped, and it seemed to her that all the world stopped with her to hear the first soft trill of a nightingale through the tender dusk.  It went into silence, but it left her heart throbbing strangely.  Surely—­surely there was magic all around her!  That bird-voice in the silence thrilled her through and through.  She stood spell-bound, waiting for the enchanted music to fill her soul.  There followed a few liquid notes, and then there came a far-off, flute-like call, gradually swelling, gradually drawing nearer, so pure, so wild, so full of ecstasy, that she almost felt as if it were more than she could bear.  It broke at last in a crystal shower of song, and she turned and looked out over the glittering sea and asked herself if it could be real.  It was as if a spirit had called to her out of the summer night.

Then Columbus came careering along the path in fevered search of her, and quite suddenly, like the closing of a lid, the magic sounds vanished into a deep silence.

“Oh, Columbus!” his mistress murmured reproachfully.  “You’ve stopped the music!”

Columbus responded by planting his paws against her, and giving her a vigorous push.  There was decidedly more of common sense than poetry in his composition.  The passion for exploring which had earned him his name was his main characteristic, and he wanted to get as far as possible before the time arrived to turn back.

She yielded to his persuasion, and walked on up the path with her face to the shimmering sea.  For some reason she felt divinely happy, as if she had drunk of the wine of the gods.  It had been so wonderful—­that song of starlight and of Spring.

It was very warm, and she wore neither hat nor wrap.  If she had come out in a bathing-dress, no one would have known, she reflected.  But in this she was wrong, for presently, as she sauntered along, she became aware of a faint scent other than the wonderful cocoa-nut perfume of the gorse bushes—­a scent that made her aware of the presence of another human being in that magic place.

She looked about for him with a faint smile on her lips, but the cliff-path ran empty before her, ascending in a series of fairly stiff climbs to the brow of High Shale Point.  Columbus hurried along ahead of her as if he had made up his mind to reach the top at all costs.  But Juliet had no intention of mounting to the summit of the frowning cliff that night.  She had a vagrant desire to track that elusive scent, but even that, it seemed was not to be satisfied, and at length she stopped again and sent a summoning whistle after Columbus.

It was almost at the same moment that there came from behind her a sound that shattered all the fairy romance of the night at a blow.  She turned sharply, and immediately, like a fiendish chorus, it came again spreading and echoing along the cliffs—­the yelling of drunken laughter.