girl until -- until Buckley... until tonight, now.
But I can never be that again, something has happened...
in my heart, something has gone, and
come," her voice grew shadowed, wistful. It carried
to him, in an intangible manner, a fleet warning,
as though something immense, unguessed, august,
uttered through Lettice Hollidew the whisper of a
magnificent and terrible menace. He felt again as
he had felt as a child before the vast mystery of
night. An impulse seized him to hurry away
from the portico, from the youthful figure at his side;
a sudden, illogical fear chilled him. But he summoned
the hardihood, the skepticism, of his heart;
he defied -- while the sinking within him persisted --
not the girl, but the nameless force beyond, above,
about them. "You are like a star," he repeated, in
forced tones.

He rose and stood before her. She swayed toward
him like a flower bowed by the wind. He put
his arms around her, her head lay back, and he
kissed the smooth fullness of her throat. He kissed
her lips.

The eternal, hapless cry of the whippoorwills
throbbed on his hearing. The moon slipped behind
a corner of the house, and a wave of darkness
swept over them. Lettice began to tremble violently,
and he led her back to their place on the veranda's
edge. She was silent, and clung to him with a re-

[[123]]

p122 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p123w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p124

v?