When 'out' like this, waking was the dream---the sunlight
world forgotten.
'This Pattern has always been my own,' she continued with infinite
softness, yet so clearly that his whole body seemed a single ear
against her lips, 'for I've thought it ever since I can remember. I've
lived it. This Network of Stars I made ages ago in a garden among far
bigger mountains than these hills, a garden I knew vividly, yet could
not always find--almost as though I dreamed it. The Net included the--
oh, included everything there is, and I fastened it to four big pines
that grew on the further side of the torrent in that mountain garden
of my dream--fastened it with nails of falling stars. And I made the
Pleiades its centre because I loved them best of all. Oh! Orion,
Orion, how big and comforting your arms are! Please hold me tight for
ever and ever!'
'But I know it, too, that lovely dream,' he cried. 'It all comes back
to me. I, too, have dreamed it with you then somewhere--somewhere---!'
His voice choked. He had never known that life could hold such
sweetness, wonder, joy. The universe lay within his arms.
'All the people I wanted to help I used to catch in my Net of Stars,'
she went on. 'There was a train that brought them up to its edges, and
once I got the passengers into the web, and hung them loose in it till
they were soaked with starlight, I could send them back happier and
braver than they came.
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