She sat down and stared into dark space.  She walked languidly and purposelessly to the wardrobe.  She stopped to pick a petal from the carpet.  The sound of the last door was over, the retiring footfall had died away in the distance, the last voice was hushed; the moon was shining on the sea.  A lovely scene, silver and blue; but how the girl’s heart was beating!  She sighed.

She sighed as if she had forgotten, and approaching her bedside she raised her hands to her neck.  It was the instinctive movement of undressing.  Her hands dropped, she did not even unbutton her collar.  She could not.  She resumed her walk, she picked up a blossom that had fallen, she looked out on the pale white sea.  There was moonlight now in the room, a ghastly white spot was on the pillow.  She was tired.  The moonlight called her.  She lay down with her profile in the light.

But there were smell and features in the glare—­the odour was that of the tramp’s skin, the features—­a long thin nose, pressed lips, small eyes, a look of dull liquorish cruelty.  And this presence was beside her; she could not rid herself of it, she repulsed it with cries, but it came again, and mocking, lay on the pillow.

Horrible, too horrible!  She sprang from the bed.  Was there anyone in her room?  How still it was!  The mysterious moonlight, the sea white as a shroud, the sward so chill and death-like.  What!  Did it move?  Was it he?  That fearsome shadow!  Was she safe?  Had they forgotten to bar up the house?  Her father’s house!  Horrible, too horrible, she must shut out this treacherous light—­darkness were better....

* * * * *

The curtains are closed, but a ray glinting between the wall and curtain shows her face convulsed.  Something follows her:  she knows not what, her thoughts are monstrous and obtuse.  She dares not look round, she would turn to see if her pursuer is gaining upon her, but some invincible power restrains her....  Agony!  Her feet catch in, and she falls over great leaves.  She falls into the clefts of ruined tombs, and her hands as she attempts to rise are laid on sleeping snakes—­rattlesnakes:  they turn to attack her, and they glide away and disappear in moss and inscriptions.  O, the calm horror of this region!  Before her the trees extend in complex colonnades, silent ruins are grown through with giant roots, and about the mysterious entrances of the crypts there lingers yet the odour of ancient sacrifices.  The stem of a rare column rises amid the branches, the fragment of an arch hangs over and is supported by a dismantled tree trunk.  Ages ago the leaves fell, and withered; ages ago; and now the skeleton arms, lifted in fantastic frenzy against the desert skies, are as weird and symbolic as the hieroglyphics on the tombs below.

And through the torrid twilight of the approaching storm the cry of the hyena is heard.