He did not mention it to his companion, who
was wumbling away in his beard about some difficult details of his
book, but the thought slipped through his mind like the trail of a
flying comet: 'I'd like to stay a long time in this village and get
the people straight a bit,'--which, had he known it, was another
thought carefully paraphrased so that he should not notice it and feel
alarm: 'It will be difficult to get away from here. My feet are in
that net of stars. It's catching about my heart.'
Low in the sky a pale, witched moon of yellow watched them go....
'The Starlight Express is making this way, I do believe,' he thought.
But perhaps he spoke the words aloud instead of thinking them.
'Eh! What's that you said, Henry?' asked the other, taking it for a
comment of value upon the plot of a story he had referred to.
'Oh, nothing particular,' was the reply. 'But just look at those stars
above La Tourne. They shine like beacons burning on the trees.' Minks
would have called them 'braziers.'
'They are rather bright, yes,' said the other, disappointed. 'The air
here is so very clear.' And they went up the creaking wooden stairs to
supper in the Wistaria Pension as naturally as though the years had
lifted them behind the mountains of the past in a single bound--
twenty-five years ago.
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