But the cypress trees still surround the monasteries, and the high hills are still crowned with castellos, while the fields make a patchwork of different crops of olives and vines and grain.
John Derringham mounted the stairs with his head down, musing bitterly, so that, until he reached the top, he was not aware that a slender girl's figure was seated upon the old stone bench which runs round the wall.

Her hat lay upon the seat beside her, while she gazed out over the beautiful world.

He paused with a wildly beating heart in which joy and agony fought for mastery, but, as she turned to see who this stranger could be, thus breaking in upon her solitude, his voice, hoarse with emotion, said aloud her name: "Halcyone!" She started to her feet, and then sank back upon the bench again unsteadily, and he came forward to her side.

They both realized that they were alone here in the sunset--alone upon this summit of the world.
He sat down beside her and then he buried his face in his hands, letting his cap fall; and all the pent-up misery and anguish of the past weeks seemed to vibrate in his voice as he murmured: "Ah, God!--my love!" Her soft eyes melted upon him in deepest tenderness and sorrow.

To see him so pale and shattered, so changed from the splendid lover she had known! But he was there--beside her--and what mattered anything else?
She longed to comfort him and tend him with fond care.