She said she would love to, and, slipping indoors to make ready, she came back in a moment with a silk handkerchief about her head, which made her face intoxicating to the boy who was waiting for it, and feeling for the first time the thrilling, quivering call of body and soul that is the secret of the continued race. So off they went together with a rhythmic stride, down the sandy road to the shore--he bareheaded, and she in her white dress and the satin slippers in which her footsteps made no noise. The ruined church was on a lonesome spot on the edge of the sea, with the sea's moan always over it, and the waves thundering in the dark through the cavernous rocks beneath. Fenella bore herself bravely until they reached the roofless chancel, where an elm tree grew, and the moonlight, now coming and going among the moving clouds, was playing upon the tomb of some old churchman whose unearthed bones the antiquaries had lately covered with a stone and surrounded by an iron railing, and then she clutched at Victor's arm, held on tightly and trembled like a child. That restored the balance of things a little, and going home (it was his turn to hold on now) he could not help chaffing her on her feminine fear. Was that one of the old stories that would have to be re-told .... when the great world-change came, the great cataclysm? "Oh, that? Well, of course .... (he believed she was blushing, though in the darkness he could not see) women may not have the strength and courage of men--the physical courage, I mean...." "Only physical?" he asked. She stammered again, and said that naturally men would always be men and women, women. "You don't want that altered, do you?" she said. "Oh no, not I, not a bit," said Victor, and then there was more laughter (rather tremulous laughter now) and less talking for the next five minutes. They had got back to the piazza by this time, and knowing that her face was in the shaft of light that came through the glass door from the dining-room, Fenella turned quickly and shot away upstairs. For the first time in his life Victor did not sleep until after three o'clock next morning. He saw the moonlight creep across the cocoa-nut matting on his bedroom floor and heard the clock on the staircase landing strike every hour from eleven to three. Now that he was alone he was feeling degraded and ashamed. Here was this splendid girl touching life at its core, dealing with the great things, the everlasting things, attuning her heart to the future and the big eternal problems .... while he! But under all the self-reproach there was something joyous too, something delicious, something that made him hot and dizzy and would not let him sleep, because a blessed hymn of praise was singing within, and it was so wonderful to be alive.