in the shadow with a young man, spruce and white-shirted.  They had to wait at one street for a tram to rush past screeching and rattling.  At one crossing Ned had seized her arm because a cab was coming carelessly.  One of the lovers in the avenue was tracing lines on the ground with a stick, while her sweetheart leaned over her.  Down under the rocks she saw the forms of sleepers here and there; from one clump of bushes came a sound of heavy snoring.  She saw all this, everything, a thousand incidents, but she did not heed them.  She was as one in a daze; or as one who moves and thinks and sees, sleep-walking.

So they reached the point by Lady Macquarie’s Chair, paused for a moment at the turn, hesitated, then together, as of one accord, went down the grassy slope by the landing stairs and out upon the rough wave-eaten fringe of rock to the water’s edge.  They were alone together, alone in Paradise.  There were none others in the whole world.

Above them, almost overhead, in the starry sky, the full round moon was sailing, her white glare falling upon a matchless scene of mingling land and water, sea and shore and sky.  Like a lake the glorious harbour stretched before them and on either hand.  In its bosom the moon sailed as in a mirror; on it great ships floated at anchor and islets nestled down; all round the sheltering hills verily clapped their hands.  In the great dome of the universe there was not a cloud.  Through the starless windows of that glorious dome they could see into the fathomless depths of Eternity.  Under the magic of the moon not even the sordid work of man struck a discordant note.  At their feet the faint ripplings of this crystal lake whispered their ceaseless lullaby and close behind them the trees rustled softly in the languid breathings of the sleeping sea.  Of a truth it was Paradise, fit above all fitness to gladden the hearts of men, worthy to fill the soul to overflowing with the ecstasy of living, deserving to be enshrined as a temple of the Beautiful wherein all might worship together, each his own God.

The keen sense of its loveliness, its perfect beauty, its sublime simplicity, stole over Nellie as she stood silently by Ned’s side in the full moonlight and gazed.  Over her angry soul, tortured by the love she hardly knew, its pure languor crept, soothing, softening.  She looked up at the silvery disc and involuntarily held out her hands to it, its radiance overpowering her.  She wrenched her eyes away from it suddenly, a strange fearfulness leaping in her who knew no fear; the light at the South Heads flashed before her, the convent stood out in the far distance, a ferry-house shone white, the towers and roofs of Sydney showed against the sky, the lights on the shipping and on the further shore were as reflections of the stars above.  And there in the water, as in a mirror, was that glowing moon.  Startled, she found herself thinking that it would be heavenly to take Ned’s hand and plunge underneath this crystal sheet that alone separated them from peace and happiness.  She looked up again.  There was the moon itself, swimming amid the twinkling stars, full and round and white and radiant.  As its rays enwrapped her eyes, she heard the leaves rustling in melody and the wavelets rippling in tune.