Chapter 1 of The Immortal Moment by May Sinclair. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox .org. Recording by Kirsten Weber. The Immortal Moment by May Sinclair. Chapter 1. They came into the hotel dining room like young persons making their first entry into life. They carried themselves with an air of subdued audacity, of innocent inquiry. When the great doors opened to them, they stood still on the threshold, charmed, expectant. There was the magic of quest, of pure unspoiled adventure, in their very efforts to catch the headwaiter's eye. It was as if they called from its fantastic dwelling place the attendant spirit of delight. You could never have guessed how old they were. He, at 35, had preserved, by some miracle, his alert and slender adolescence. In his brown, clean -shaven face, keen with pleasure, you saw the clear, serious eyes and the adorable smile of 17. She, at 30, had kept the wide eyes and tender mouth of childhood. Her face had a child's immortal spiritual appeal. They were charming with each other. You might have taken them for bride and bridegroom. His absorption in her was so unimpaired. But their names in the visitor's book stood as Mr. Robert Lucy and Miss Jane Lucy. They were brother and sister. You gathered it from something absurdly alike in their faces, something profound and racial and enduring, for they combined it all, the youth, the abandonment, the innocence, with an indomitable distinction. They made their way with easy, unembarrassed movements and seated themselves at a table by an open window. They bent their brows together over the menu. The head waiter, who had flown at last to their high summons, made them his peculiar care, and they turned to him with the helplessness of children. He told them what things they would like, what things, he seemed to say, would be good for them. And when he went away with their order, they looked at each other and laughed, softly and instantaneously. They had done the right thing. They both said it at the same moment, smiling triumphantly into each other's face. Southbourne was exquisite in young June at the dawn of its season, and the Cliff Hotel promised what they wanted, a gay seclusion, a refined publicity. If you were grossly rich, you went to the big hotel metropole opposite. If you were a person of fastidious tastes and an attenuated income, you felt the superior charm of the Cliff Hotel. The little house, the joy of its proprietor, was hidden in the privacy of its own beautiful grounds, having its back to the high road and its face to the open sea. They had taken stock of it that morning with its clean walls, white as the cliff it stood on, its bay windows, its long green -roofed veranda looking south, its sharp slated roofs and gables all sheltered by