yriad-eyed black sky. They went on talking and laughing, pointing out
the constellations they knew, and trying to find others in the spangled
vault over their heads.

"A bear!" cried Mark. "I could draw a better bear than that any day!"
And from Paul, "They can call it Orion's belt all they want to, but
there's no belt to it!" And from Elly, "Aldebaran! Aldebaran! Red-eyed
Aldebaran!"

But little by little the house-air began to be thinned about them, to
blow away from between them in wisps and wreathes, off into the
blackness. The warmed, lighted house dwindled to nothing. There were
only the great cold black sky and the small cold white earth. Their
voices were lowered; they stood very still, close together, their heads
tipped back, their faces and hearts upraised silently to receive the
immensity above and about them.

Elly murmured under her breath, "Doesn't it seem funny, our world being
just one of all those, and such a little one, and here we are, just
these few of us, standing on the world and looking at it all."

Marise thought, "We seem to be the only living things in all creation."
In that huge, black, cold glittering universe how tiny was the little
glow of life they made!

Tiny but unquenchable! Those myriads of hard staring eyes could not look
down the immortal handful of human life and love which she and Neale had
created between them.

There was a silence, filled with still, breathless cold; with enormous
space, with infinity.

Marise felt a rigorous shudder run over her, as though something vital
were coming to her, like the rending pang of pain which heralds
child-birth. After this, did she close her eyes for a moment, or did it
come to her while she continued to gaze wide-eyed at the stern greatness
of the universe? What was this old, familiar, unknown sensation?

. . . as though, on a long journey in the dark it had grown light, so that
she had suddenly recognized which way she was going.

Then she knew what it was. Conscious and awake, she was feeling herself
one with the great current, advancing with an irresistible might,
majesty and power, in which she shared, to which she gave her part.

VI

January.

She was putting away the clean sheets from the washing on the shelves at
the end of the hall, upstairs, her mind entirely on the prosaic task,
wondering when she would have to replace some of the older ones, and
wishing she could put off buying till the outrageous post-war prices