old planets staring
at ours. David wondered what it looked like from up there. Was it as
large, or were we just a tiny, twinkling point too? From city streets
the stars had always chilled him by their awful suggestion of worlds
beyond worlds circling through gulfs of space. But here in the
primordial solitudes, under the solemn cope of the sky, the thought
lost its terror. He seemed in harmony with the universe, part of it as
was each speck of star dust. Without question or understanding he felt
secure, convinced of his oneness with the great design, cradled in its
infinite care.

One evening while thus dreaming he caught Susan's eye full of curious
interest like a watching child's.

"What are you thinking of?" she asked.

"The stars," he answered. "They used to frighten me."

She looked from him to the firmament as if to read a reason for his
fear:

"Frighten you? Why?"

"There were so many of them, thousands and millions, wandering about up
there. It was so awful to think of them, how they'd been swinging
round forever and would keep on forever. And maybe there were people
on some of them, and what it all was for."

She continued to look up and then said indifferently:

"It doesn't seem to me to matter much."

"It used to make me feel that nothing was any use. As if I was just a
grain of dust."

Her eyes came slowly down and rested on him in a musing gaze.

"A grain of dust. I never felt that way. I shouldn't think you'd like
it, but I don't see why you were afraid."

David felt uncomfortable. She was so exceedingly practical and direct
that he had an unpleasant feeling she would set him down as a coward,
who went about under the fear that a meteor might fall on him and
strike him dead. He tried to explain:

"Not afraid actually, just sort of frozen by the idea of it all. It's
so--immense, so--so crushing and terrible."

Her gaze continued, a questioning quality entering it. This gained in
force by a slight tilting of her head to one side. David began to fear
her next question. It might show that she regarded him not only as a
coward but also as a fool.

"Perhaps you don't understand," he hazarded timidly.

"I don't think I do," she answered, then dropped her eyes and added
after a moment of pondering, "I can't remember ever being really afraid
of anything."

Had it been daylight she would have noticed that the young man colored.
He thought guiltily of certain haunting fears o