aring at each
other's eyes. Hearing a rustling sound, they looked, and saw Bianca
moving to the door. Cecilia, too, had risen.

"What is it, B.?"

Bianca, opening the door, went out. Cecilia followed swiftly, too late
to catch even a glimpse of her sister's face behind the veil...

In Mr. Stone's room the green lamp burned dimly, and he who worked by it
was sitting on the edge of his campbed, attired in his old brown woollen
gown and slippers.

And suddenly it seemed to him that he was not alone.

"I have finished for to-night," he said. "I am waiting for the moon to
rise. She is nearly full; I shall see her face from here."

A form sat down by him on the bed, and a voice said softly:

"Like a woman's."

Mr. Stone saw his younger daughter. "You have your hat on. Are you
going out, my dear?"

"I saw your light as I came in."

"The moon," said Mr. Stone, "is an arid desert. Love is unknown there."

"How can you bear to look at her, then?" Bianca whispered.

Mr. Stone raised his finger. "She has risen."

The wan moon had slipped out into the darkness. Her light stole across
the garden and through the open window to the bed where they were
sitting.

"Where there is no love, Dad," Bianca said, "there can be no life, can
there?"

Mr. Stone's eyes seemed to drink the moonlight.

"That," he said, "is the great truth. The bed is shaking!"

With her arms pressed tight across her breast, Bianca was struggling with
violent, noiseless sobbing. That desperate struggle seemed to be tearing
her to death before his eyes, and Mr. Stone sat silent, trembling. He
knew not what to do. From his frosted heart years of Universal
Brotherhood had taken all knowledge of how to help his daughter. He
could only sit touching her tremulously with thin fingers.

The form beside him, whose warmth he felt against his arm, grew stiller,
as though, in spite of its own loneliness, his helplessness had made it
feel that he, too; was lonely. It pressed a little closer to him. The
moonlight, gaining pale mastery over the flickering lamp, filled the
whole room.

Mr. Stone said: "I want her mother!"

The form beside him ceased to struggle.

Finding out an old, forgotten way, Mr. Stone's arm slid round that
quivering body.

"I do not know what to say to her," he muttered, and slowly he began to
rock himself.

"Motion," he said, "is soothing."

The moon passed on. The form beside him sat so still that Mr. Stone