les-Norton.
She was slim and very fair, with hair that lay light upon her head as a
golden vapor, and she wore upon her shoulders, negligently draped, a
scarf within the white shimmer of which a color glowed like a flame.
Beside her nearly always hovered a big young fellow, dark and handsome,
but who did not seem very happy.

One evening she rose abruptly, and before Charles-Norton could guess her
intention, she had opened the door, and was out upon the veranda, gazing
toward him with eyes yet blind with the darkness. Charles-Norton did not
move. They two remained thus long, she looking straight out into the
void, divining perhaps--who knows?--a vague palpitant whiteness, like a
soul, out there in the night; he, moving his great wings slowly and
softly, while his heart within him thumped loud. Then he let himself sink
silently, till beneath the plane of the Inn's floor, circled, and rising
again, took a position at the end of the veranda, from which, peering
around the corner of the house, he could still observe her.

She stood there, tight against the rail, as though she had brought up
abruptly against it, making impetuously for the void. He could see her
slight pliant form, silhouetted against the jeweled horizon; upon her
shoulders, her scarf floated like a vague phosphorescence, and her face
was whitely turned toward the stars. He heard her take a long deep breath
of the night, and then her arms went up and out in a vibrant gesture.

She remained thus, a long moment, her eyes toward the stars, her arms
toward the stars, and her whole slender body, arched slightly backward,
seemed to offer itself to the stars. Then suddenly her head dropped, her
arms dropped, and she straightened, leaning against the rail. The door
behind had opened and closed again, and upon the veranda, now, was the
big loom of another form, a form which carried, at the height of the
head, a warm pulsing glow, like the incandescent point of a red-heated
poker.

They stood immobile, the two, a long time. She had not stirred since her
first start; she remained with her back to the door, her eyes out into
the void. Then the point of light on the larger form slid down, till it
dangled at the end of what Charles-Norton guessed was an arm, and a low
voice toned in the silence. "Why did you leave me?" he said; "why do you
always leave me?"

Her voice answered immediately, clear and warm as a red crystal. "Oh, I
wanted to say good-by to the stars," sh