The moon kept rising and brightening, slowly victorious over the pallid light of the dying sun, at last she lifted herself out of the vaporous horizon, ascended over the treetops, and went walking through the unobstructed sky, mistress of the air, queen of the heavens, lady of the eyes of men. Yet she was lady only because she beheld her lord. She saw the light of her light, and told what she saw of him.

“When the soul of man sees God, it shines!” said Richard.

They reached at length the spot where first they met in the moonlight. With one heart they stopped and turned, and looked in each other’s moonlit eyes.

“Do you know that lovely passage in the book of Baruch?” asked Richard.

“What book is that?” returned Barbara. “It surely can’t be in the Bible?”

“It is in the Apocrypha—which is to me very much in the Bible—written by the prophet Jeremiah’s friend and amanuensis. I think I can repeat it as it stands in the English Bible. It was the moon that made me think of it. ‘The stars shined in their watches, and rejoiced: when he calleth them, they say, Here we be. And so with cheerfulness they showed light unto him that made them. This is our God, and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison to him.’”

“That is beautiful!” cried Barbara. “And so with cheerfulness they showed light unto him that made them!”

A silence followed. Then again Barbara spoke, and she clung a little closer to her husband.

“I want to tell you something that came to me one night when we were in London,” she said. “It was a miserable time—before I found you up in the orchestra seats there! Then hell became purgatory for me, for there was hope in it. London is a terrible city, full of misery. I was very sad, and saw nothing around me but a waste of dreariness. I kept asking God to give me patience. But the days were dismal, and the balls and dinners so frightful. I seemed to be in a world without air. The girls were so silly, the men so inane, and the conversation so mawkish and colourless! Their compliments sickened me.