and white like straying bits of the moon, and the mysterious ‘swishing’ of slow ripples heaving against the sides of the yacht suggested the whisperings of uncanny spirits.  We stood in a silent group, entranced by the grandeur of the night and by our own loneliness in the midst of it, for there was no sign of a fisherman’s hut or boat moored to the shore, or anything which could give us a sense of human companionship.  A curious feeling of disappointment suddenly came over me,—­I lifted my eyes to the vast dark sky with a kind of mute appeal—­and moon and stars appeared to float up there like ships in a deep sea,—­I had expected something more in this strange, almost spectral-looking landscape, and yet I knew not why I should expect anything.  Beautiful as the whole scene was, and fully as I recognised its beauty, an overpowering depression suddenly gripped me as with a cold hand,—­there was a dreary emptiness in this majestic solitude that seemed to crush my spirit utterly.

I moved a little away from my companions, and leaned over the deck rail, looking far into the black shadows of the shore, defined more deeply by the contrasting brilliance of the moon, and my thoughts flew with undesired swiftness to the darkest line of life’s horizon--I had for the moment lost the sense of joy.  How wretched all we human creatures are!—­I said to my inner self,—­what hope after all is there for us, imprisoned in a world which has no pity for us whatever may be our fate,—­a world that goes on in precisely the same fashion whether we live or die, work or are idle?  These tragic hills, this cold lake, this white moon, were the same when Caesar lived, and would still be the same when we who gazed upon them now were all gone into the Unknown.  It seemed difficult to try and realise this obvious fact—­so difficult as to be almost unnatural.  Supposing that any towns or villages had ever existed on this desolate shore, they had proved useless against the devouring forces of Nature,—­just as the splendid buried cities of South America had proved useless in all their magnificence,—­useless as the ’Golden Age of Lanka’ in Ceylon more than two thousand years ago.  Of what avail then is the struggle of human life?  Is it for the many or only for the few?  Is all the toil and sorrow of millions merely for the uplifting and perfecting of certain individual types, and is this what Christ meant when He said ‘Many are called but few are chosen’?  If so, why such waste of brain and heart and love and patience?  Tears came suddenly into my eyes and I started as from a bad dream when Dr. Brayle approached me softly from behind.

“I am sorry to disturb your reverie!”—­he said—­“But Miss Harland has gone into the deck saloon and we are all waiting to hear you sing.”

I looked up at him.

“I don’t feel as if I could sing to-night,”—­I replied, rather tremulously—­“This lonely landscape depresses me—­”

He saw that my eyes were wet, and smiled.