ineffably profound. The hint of life bound in the cores of sleep,
prisoner to rest, deepened Nature's impression and sent Vere into
reverie. There were no trees here. No birds sang, for although it was
the month of the nightingales, none ever came to sing to San
Francesco. No insects chirped or hummed. All was stark and almost
fearfully still as in a world abandoned; and the light fell on the old
faces of the rocks faintly, as if it feared to show the ravages made
in them by the storms of the long ages they had confronted and defied.

Vere had a sensation of sinking very slowly down into a gulf, as she
stood there, not falling, but sinking, down into some world of quiet
things, farther and farther down, leaving all the sounds of life far
up in light above her. And descent was exquisite, easy and natural,
and, indeed, inevitable. Nothing called her from below. For where she
was going there were no voices. Yet she felt that at last there would
be something to receive her; mystical stillness, mystical peace.

A silky sound--far off--checked that imaginative descent that seemed
so physical, first merely arrested it, then, always silky, but growing
louder, took her swiftly and softly back to the summit she had left.
Now she was conscious again of herself and of the night. She was
listening. The sound that had broken her reverie was the gentle sweep
of big-bladed oars through the calm sea. As she knew this she saw,
away to the right, a black shadow stealing across the silver waste
beyond the islet. It pushed its way to the water at her very feet, and
chose that as its anchorage.

The figure of the rower stood up straight and black for a moment,
looking lonely in the night.