He felt with his hand for the rose-­covered bower through which one descended the long wooden stairway of the bluff. It might be pleasant to go down the steps and sit at the bottom for a moment. Though it was too dark to tell, there seemed to be no fog; at least he did not feel its dampness blowing across his face. He started down.

Near the bottom was the small landing where he had sat smoking a cigarette while Cliff sloshed about in the shower singing From the Halls of Montezuma. All around, along the railings on either side and spreading in unchecked profusion up the slope, were the rambler roses indigenous to the island, fast fading with the season. He could not smell the roses, for they were a variety without scent, nor could he see them; but he had seen them by daylight and he knew they were there. In the harsh glare of noon they looked hard, cold, and pale, as if they were paper, wax, or iron painted.

Over the southeast horizon, out of the dark water, that was literally one of the roads to the South Pacific, a blurred salmon-­colored shape arose, which, clearing the edge of the sea, slowly revealed itself as the nearly full moon. Round but for a vague edge, enormous, faintly glowing, it hung low in the eastern sky looking far nearer than it would later look when it had risen high and bright in the zenith. The illusory shapes and shadows of its surface were discernible only to the first casual glance; when he stared at them to search them out, discover their pattern or trace the contours of the legendary face, they vanished.

It was also at this spot, he reflected, where Cliff had said, so diffidently, Are you happily married?

The moon with its worn edge was well over the rim of the sea now, exaggerated in size, overdone, theatrical, red as the red of a flag. The palpable brilliance of its color, looking as if still wet from the brush, didn’t last. Rising higher, it began gradually to slide under some unseen far ledge of sky, till only its lower diminishing half glowed hot above the sea. Inevitably this piece too was drawn up under the obscuring layer of cloud or fog, and the moon was gone.