cold as charity. Don't seem much warmth from it if it _is_
nearer, all the same."

"What is a new star to me?" cried the weeping woman, kneeling beside her
dead.

The schoolboy, rising early for his examination work, puzzled it out for
himself--with the great white star shining broad and bright through the
frost-flowers of his window. "Centrifugal, centripetal," he said, with his
chin on his fist. "Stop a planet in its flight, rob it of its centrifugal
force, what then? Centripetal has it, and down it falls into the sun! And
this--!

"Do _we_ come in the way? I wonder--"

The light of that day went the way of its brethren, and with the later
watches of the frosty darkness rose the strange star again. And it was now
so bright that the waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost of itself,
hanging huge in the sunset. In a South African city a great man had
married, and the streets were alight to welcome his return with his bride.
"Even the skies have illuminated," said the flatterer. Under Capricorn,
two negro lovers, daring the wild beasts and evil spirits for love of one
another, crouched together in a cane brake where the fire-flies hovered.
"That is our star," they whispered, and felt strangely comforted by the
sweet brilliance of its light.

The master mathematician sat in his private room and pushed the papers from
him. His calculations were already finished. In a small white phial there
still remained a little of the drug that had kept him awake and active for
four long nights. Each day, serene, explicit, patient as ever, he had
given his lecture to his students, and then had come back at once to this
momentous calculation. His face was grave, a little drawn and hectic from
his drugged activity. For some time he seemed lost in thought. Then he
went to the window, and the blind went up with a click. Half-way up the
sky, over the clustering roofs, chimneys, and steeples of the city, hung
the star.

He looked at it as one might look into the eyes of a brave enemy. "You may
kill me," he said after a silence. "But I can hold you--and all the
universe for that matter--in the grip of this small brain. I would not
change. Even now."

He looked at the little phial. "There will be no need of sleep again," he
said. The next day at noon, punctual to the minute, he entered his lecture
theatre, put his hat on the end of the table as his habit was, and
carefully selected a large piece of chalk. It was a joke among his
stu