The day went by. He worked with Strickland. The latter thought him a little absent, but the accounts were checked and decisions made. At the supper-table he was more quiet than usual.
"Full moon to-night," said Alice. "What does it look like, Alexander, when it shines in Rome and when it comes up right out of the desert?"
"It lights the ruins and it is pale day in the desert. What makes you think to-night of Rome and the desert?"
"I do not know. I see the rim now out of window."
The moon climbed. It shone with an intense silver behind leafless boughs and behind the dark-clad boughs of firs. It came above the trees. The night hung windless and deeply clear. A fire burned upon the hearth of the room in the keep. Alexander sat before it and he sat very still, and vast pictures came to the inner eye, and to the inner ear meanings of old words....
He rose at last, took a cloak, and went down the stone stair into a night cold, still, and bright. The path by the school-house, the hand's-breadth of silvered earth, the broken, silvered wall, the pine, the rough descent.... He went through the dark wood where the shining fell broken like a shattered mirror. Beyond held open country until he came to the glen mouth. The moon was high. He heard faint sounds of the far night-time, and his own step upon the silver earth. He came to the glen and the sound of water streaming to the sea.
How well he knew this place! Thick trees spread arms above, rock that leaned darkened the narrow path. But his foot knew where to tread. In some more open span down poured the twice-broken light; then came darkness. There was a great checkering of light and darkness and the slumbrous sound of water. The path grew steeper and rougher. He was approaching the middle of the place.
At last he came to the cave mouth and the leafless briers that curtained it. Just before it was reached, the moonbeams struck through clear air. There was a silver lightness. A form moved from where it had rested against the rock. Ian's voice spoke.
"Alexander?"