"This is the edge of the world," she said softly. "Do you remember your
little verses about the death of the stars?" She turned and raised her
eyes to his. "We are holding a death-watch beside them now as the moon
comes up over the ridge there. When I read the poem I felt breathless to
get out somewhere high up and away from things--and watch."
"I was 'high up' when I wrote them," answered Andrew with a laugh. "Look
over there on the hill--see those two old locusts? They are fern palms
and those scrub oaks are palmettos. The white frost makes the meadow a
lagoon and this rock is the pier of my bridge where I came out to watch
one night to test the force of a freshet. Over there the light from Mrs.
Matilda's fires is the construction camp and beyond that hill is my
bungalow. That's the same old moon that's rising relentlessly to murder
the stars again. Do you want to stay and watch the tragedy--or hunt?"
Without a word Caroline sank down on the dried leaves that lay in a drift
on the edge of the bluff. Andrew crouched close beside her to the
windward. And the ruthless old moon that was putting the stars out of
business by the second was not in the least abashed to find them gazing
at her as she blustered up over the ridge, round and red with exertion.
"Were you alone on that pier?" asked Caroline with the utmost naïveté, as
she snuggled down deeper into the collar of the sweater.
"I'm generally alone--in most ways," answered Andrew, the suspicion of a
laugh covering the sadness in his tone. "I seem to see myself going
through life alone unless something happens--quick!" The bitter note
sounded plainly this time and cut with an ache into her consciousness.
"I've been a little lonely, too--always, until just lately and now I
don't feel that way at all;" she looked at him thoughtfully with moonlit
eyes that were deep like sapphires. "I wonder why?"
Andrew Sevier's heart stopped dead still for a second and then began to
pound in his breast as if entrapped. For the moment his voice was utterly
useless and he prayed helplessly for a meed of self-control that might
aid him to gain a sane footing.
Then just at that moment the old genie of the forests, who gloats through
the seasons over myriads of wooings that are carried on in the fastnesses
of his green woods, sounded a long, low, guttural groan that rose to a
blood-curdling shriek, from the branches just above the head of the
moon-mad man and girl. For an instrument he used the throat of an enraged
old hoot-owl, perturbed by the intrusion of the noise of the distant hunt
and the low-voiced conversation on his wonted privacy.