a story
of two like you and me. The man is writing to the woman, and it has
things that you have said to me--in a different way."

"No, I don't talk like a book, but I know a star in a dark night when I
see it," he answered, with a catch in his throat.

"Hush," she said, catching his hand in hers, as she read, while all
around them the sounds of summer--the distant clack of a reaper, the
crack of a whip, the locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the
squeak of a chipmunk--were tuned to the harmony of the moment and her
voice:

"'Night and the sombre silence, oh, my love, and one star shining!
First, warm, velvety sleep, and then this quick, quiet waking to
your voice which seems to call me. Is it--is it you that calls?
Do you sometimes, even in your dreams, speak to me? Far beneath
unconsciousness is there the summons of your spirit to me?...
I like to think so. I like to think that this thing which has come
to us is deeper, greater than we are. Sometimes day and night there
flash before my eyes--my mind's eyes--pictures of you and me in
places unfamiliar, landscapes never before seen, activities
uncomprehended and unknown, bright, alluring glimpses of some second
being, some possible, maybe never-to-be-realised future, alas! Yet
these swift-moving shutters of the soul, or imagination, or reality
--who shall say which?--give me a joy never before felt in life. If
I am not a better man for this love of mine for you, I am more than
I was, and shall be more than I am. Much of my life in the past was
mean and small, so much that I have said and done has been unworthy
--my love for you is too sharp a light for my gross imperfections of
the past! Come what will, be what must, I stake my life, my heart,
my soul on you--that beautiful, beloved face; those deep eyes in
which my being is drowned; those lucid, perfect hands that have
bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I must go
forwards: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did
not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of
devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams.
O Cithaeron! Turn from me now--or never, O my love! Loose me
from the mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea
of your forgetfulness now--or never!... But keep me, keep me,
if your love is great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; fo