Five Nights: A Novel

by Victoria Cross

The Crimson Night

VIII LOSS IX IN 'FRISCO X IN THE SHADOW OF THE VOLCANO XI THE WAY OF THE GODS

PART V

The White Night

XII THE FLAMES OF LIFE'S FURNACE

FIVE NIGHTS

"The nights have different colours. Some nights are black, the nights of storm: some are electric blue, some are silver, the moon-filled nights: some are red under the hot planet Mars or the fierce harvest moon. Some are white, the white nights of the Arctic winter: but this was a violet night, a hot, mysterious, violet night of Midsummer."

LIFE'S SHOP WINDOW.

INTRODUCTION

As one looks over any period of one's life, it appears behind one as a shining maze of brilliant colour with spots in it here and there of brighter or darker hue. Each spot represents a period of time when our happiness has glowed brighter or waned; sometimes it is a day, more often it is a night. Looking back now, over a stretch of my existence I see many such spots gleaming brightly; they are nights of colour. The history of many of these is too sacred to be written, but there are Five Nights, which, though not the dearest to my memory, have yet stamped themselves and their colour on it for ever. And the record of these five nights is contained in the following pages.