n short, direct
sentences. She heard his voice, but without following.

Pezzack and the under-keeper had drawn apart to the opposite side of
the cage and were talking together. The lantern hid them, but she
caught the murmur of their voices now and again. She was conscious
of having let something slip--slip away from her for ever. If she
could but recall him, and hold him to his dream! But this man,
talking in short sentences, each one so sharp and clear, was not the
Taffy she had known or could ever know.

In the blaze of the lenses suddenly she saw the truth. He and she
had changed places. She who had used to be so practical--_she_ was
the dreamer now; had come thither following a dream, walking in a
dream. He, the dreaming boy, had become the practical man, firm,
clear-sighted, direct of purpose; with a dream yet in his heart, but
a dream of great action, a dream he hid from her, certainly a dream
in which she had neither part nor lot. And yet she had made him what
he was; not willingly, not by kindness, but by injustice. What she
had given he had taken; and was a stranger to her.

Muffled wings and white breasts began to beat against the glass.
A low-lying haze--a passing stratum of sea-fog--had wrapped the
light-house for a while, and these were the wings and breasts of
sea-birds attracted by the light. To her they were the ghosts of
dead thoughts--stifled thoughts--thoughts which had never come to
birth--trying to force their way into the ring of light encompassing
and enwrapping her; trying desperately, but foiled by the transparent
screen.

Still she heard his voice, level and masterful, sure of his subject.
In the middle of one of his sentences a sharp thud sounded on the
pane behind her, as sudden as the crack of a pebble and only a little
duller.

"Ah, what is that?" she cried, and touched his arm.

He thrust open one of the windows, stepped out upon the gallery, and
returned in less than a minute with a small dead bird in his hand.

"A swallow," he said. "They have been preparing to fly for days.
Summer is done, with our work here."

She shivered. "Let us go back," she said.

They descended the ladders. Trevarthen met them in the kitchen and
went before them with his lantern. In a minute they were in the
cradle again and swinging toward the cliff. The wisp of sea-fog had
drifted past the light-house to leeward, and all was clear again.
High over the cupola Cassiopeia leaned toward