It was just another such an evening that she had looked into the sky from the window of Mrs Ellis' on the first day of her stay on Kiva Street. Then, beyond sighing for the peace of the country, she had believed that she had only to secure a means of winning her daily bread in order to be happy. Now, although she had obtained the two desires of her heart, she was not even content. Perigal's words awoke in her memory:
"No sooner was a desire satisfied, than one was at once eager for something else."
It would almost seem as if he had spoken the truth—"almost," because she was hard put to it to define what it was for which her being starved.
Mavis looked out of the window. The moon had not yet emerged from a bank of clouds in the east; as if in honour of her coming, the edge of these sycophants was touched with silver light. The stars were growing wan, as if sulkily retiring before the approach of an overwhelming resplendence. Mavis's cigarette went out, but she did not bother to relight it; she was wondering how she was to obtain the happiness for which her heart ached: the problem was still complicated by the fact of her being ignorant in which direction lay the promised land.
Her windows looked over the garden, beyond which fields of long grasses stretched away as far as she could see. A profound peace possessed these, which sharply contrasted with the disquiet in her mind.
Soon, hitherto invisible hedges and trees took dim, mysterious shape; the edge of the moon peeped with glorious inquisitiveness over the clouds. Calmly, royally the moon rose. So deliberately was she unveiled, that it seemed as if she were revealing her beauty to the world for the first time, like a proud, adored mistress unrobing before an impatient lover, whose eyes ached for what he now beheld.
Mystery awoke in the night. Things before unseen or barely visible were now distinct, as if eager for a smile from the aloof loveliness soaring majestically overhead.
Mavis stood in the flood of silver light. For the moment her distress of soul was forgotten. She gazed with wondering awe at the goddess of the night. The moon's coldness presently repelled her: to the girl's ardent imaginings, it seemed to speak of calm contemplation, death—things which youth, allied to warm flesh and blood, abhorred.
Then she fell to thinking of all the strange scenes in the life history of the world on which the moon had looked—stricken fields, barbaric rites, unrecorded crimes, sacked and burning cities, the blackened remains of martyrs at the stake, enslaved nations sleeping fitfully after the day's travail, wrecks on uncharted seas, forgotten superstitions, pagan saturnalias—all the thousand and one phases of life as it has been and is lived.
Although Mavis' tolerable knowledge of history told her how countless must be the sights of horror on which the moon had gazed, as indifferently as it had looked on her, she recalled, as if to leaven the memory of those atrocities (which were often of such a nature that they seemed to give the lie to the existence of a beneficent Deity), that there was ever interwoven with the web of life an eternal tale of love—love to inspire great deeds and noble aims; love to enchain the beast in woman and man; love, whose constant expression was the sacrifice of self upon the altar of the loved one.