"Better wait here, there are always inquisitive loafers around there. Come in and sit down, the moon is rising. He will not leave his friends till it is high enough to light him home." CHAPTER IV. MOONLIGHT AND SHADOW. Considine retired early to his chamber by the river-side. The moon was up and emerging in lucent clearness from the bands of dimming haze which joined the transparent heaven to the grosser earth. There was no wind, only a stealing deliciousness on the sweet night air, lulled by faint whispering among the aspen leaves hard by, and the lapping of the waters round the boat-house. It was far too good a time to waste in the unconsciousness of sleep: merely to exist and feel was tranquil joy. He extinguished his lamp, threw off his coat, and lighting a pipe, sat by the open window, and puffed and dreamed. Swiftly the stream swept by beneath the casement, each swirling eddy touched with a ring of moonlight, and wavy gleaming lines threading the dusky current in its course, showing the volume and the swiftness and the might--like time, like life, like fate. And yet it was not gloomy. The flickering lustre brightened as the moon rose higher, and Considine's eye rested meditatively upon the scene. The river, it seemed to him, was not unlike the passing of his own existence, with something cold and something solitary in it, issuing from one obscurity, and hurrying onward to another--nothing but a passing, and yet not all a cheerless one. A gentle influence, it seemed to him, was shining just then on _his_ life also, one as pure and good as the beams upon the passing tide, but like that, far off, and cool, and unapproachable. The swellings of the current seemed to leap and glance up, longing and responsive, but the Lady Moon smiled back still in the same cool gentle brightness, coming never the nearer, however the waves might flicker and burn in impotent desire and longing. Matilda, too, was very far away. The sense of yearning to be near her had long been in his soul; it had germinated and grown so gradually that he had not known its presence, till at length in its spreading it grew into his thought, and he knew that he desired.