[Sidenote: IN THE BAY OF SALERNO Nov. 30] To gaze across the black sweep of sea, out into the mystery of the night; to hear the restless waves slowly sighing through the darkness, as they beat the rocks a thousand feet beneath; to love a little so, with quiet pressure of hands, and listlessly to ponder on strange meanings of life and love and death. And so, amid a still serenity of dreamy sadness, to forget the mad turmoil of passion, to grow indifferent to all desire, and to wait, while the heart fills full of grave gratitude towards an unknown God. And then, once more, to understand how life is but a little thing, and love but a passionate illusion, and to envy the sea her sighing in the days when the end shall have come. [Sidenote: SEVILLE DANCING GIRLS December 10] The entertainment draws to its close, for it is past four in the morning. In the hall, several of the oil-lamps have already sputtered out; the rest are burning with dull, blear-eyed weariness. A score of unshaven Spaniards, close muffled in _capas_ and lowering _sombreros_, sprawl in limp attitudes over the empty benches, and the circle of gaudy women that fill the stage sit listless, pasty-faced, somnolent. And then, for the last time, the frenzy passes. The guitars start their sudden, bitter twanging, and the women their wild, rhythmical beating of hands. Amid volleys of harsh, frenzied plaudits la Manolita dances, swaying her soft, girlish frame with a tense, exasperated restraint; supple as a serpent; coyly, subtly lascivious; languidly curling and uncurling her bare white arms. Out in the cold night air, as I hasten home through the narrow, sleeping streets, her soft, girlish frame still sways before my eyes, to the bitter twanging of guitars. [Sidenote: SUNRISE] To ride alone beneath the stars, through the long indefinite hours of the night; to climb the slumbering mountain-hulks; to hear the dull roar of the river, toiling unwearied through the darkness below; to break, with a sudden clattering of hoofs, the gloomy stillness of distant village-streets, and on through the twilight that precedes the dawn, to journey, without flagging, high up against the sky, across a desolate, limitless plain. To scout the future; to unlearn the past; and to brood vaguely, as the night broods.... To elude desire; to disdain the thrill of hate; to forget the long aching of love, and to commune, in tender serenity, with the grave-eyed Spirit of Rest. And then, while the night slinks away across the hills, to push on towards the sunrise; to watch the marshalling of ruddy heralds across the East, and at last to meet the Great God’s dazzling glory, bursting in splendour across the empty land. [Sidenote: OFF CAPE TRAFALGAR December 18]