One evening she rose abruptly, and before Charles-Norton could guess her intention, she had opened the door, and was out upon the veranda, gazing toward him with eyes yet blind with the darkness. Charles-Norton did not move. They two remained thus long, she looking straight out into the void, divining perhaps--who knows?--a vague palpitant whiteness, like a soul, out there in the night; he, moving his great wings slowly and softly, while his heart within him thumped loud. Then he let himself sink silently, till beneath the plane of the Inn's floor, circled, and rising again, took a position at the end of the veranda, from which, peering around the corner of the house, he could still observe her.
She stood there, tight against the rail, as though she had brought up abruptly against it, making impetuously for the void. He could see her slight pliant form, silhouetted against the jeweled horizon; upon her shoulders, her scarf floated like a vague phosphorescence, and her face was whitely turned toward the stars. He heard her take a long deep breath of the night, and then her arms went up and out in a vibrant gesture.
She remained thus, a long moment, her eyes toward the stars, her arms toward the stars, and her whole slender body, arched slightly backward, seemed to offer itself to the stars. Then suddenly her head dropped, her arms dropped, and she straightened, leaning against the rail. The door behind had opened and closed again, and upon the veranda, now, was the big loom of another form, a form which carried, at the height of the head, a warm pulsing glow, like the incandescent point of a red-heated poker.
They stood immobile, the two, a long time. She had not stirred since her first start; she remained with her back to the door, her eyes out into the void. Then the point of light on the larger form slid down, till it dangled at the end of what Charles-Norton guessed was an arm, and a low voice toned in the silence. "Why did you leave me?" he said; "why do you always leave me?"
Her voice answered immediately, clear and warm as a red crystal. "Oh, I wanted to say good-by to the stars," she said; "I wanted to say good-by to the stars!"
"And why did you want to say good-by to the stars?" he asked, speaking softly, as to a child.