Mother, still panting from the ritual of fastening the younger children into bed, had gone a moment down the passage to say good- night to Mlle. Lemaire, and when she returned, the three of them-- herself, her husband, and Cousin Henry--dropped into chairs beside the window and watched the silvery world in silence for a time. None felt inclined to speak. There was drama somehow in that interval of silence--that drama which lurks everywhere and always behind life's commonest, most ordinary moments. Actions reveal it--sometimes--but it mostly lies concealed, and especially in deep silences like this, when the ticking of a cuckoo clock upon the wall may be the sole hint of its presence. It was not the good-byes that made all three realise it so near, though good-byes are always solemn and momentous things; it was something that stirred and rose upon them from a far deeper strata of emotion than that caused by apparent separation. For no pain lay in it, but a power much more difficult to express in the sounds and syllables of speech--Joy. A great joy, creative and of big significance, had known accomplishment. Each felt it, knew it, realised it. The moonlit night was aware of it. The entire universe knew it, too. The drama lay in that. There had been creation--of more light.... The world was richer than it had been. Some one had caught Beauty in a net, and to catch Beauty is to transform and recreate all common things. It is revelation. Through the mind of each of these three flowed the stream of casual thinking--images, reflections, and the shadowy scaffoldings of many new emotions--sweeping along between the banks of speech and silence. And this stream, though in flood, did not overflow into words for a long time. With eyes turned inwards, each watched the current pass. Clear and deep, it quietly reflected--stars. Each watched the same stream, the same calm depths, the same delicate reflections. They were in harmony with themselves, and therefore with the universe.... Then, suddenly, one of the reflections--it was the Pleiades--rose to the surface to clasp its lovely original. It was the woman who netted the golden thought and drew it forth for all to see. 'Couldn't you read it to us, Daddy?' she whispered softly across the silence. 'If it's not too long for you.' He was so eager, so willing to comply. 'We will listen till the Morning Spiders take us home,' his cousin said. 'It's only the shorter version,' Daddy agreed shiningly, 'a sketch for the book which, of course, will take a year to write. I might read _that_, perhaps.' 'Do,' urged Mother. 'We are all in it, aren't we? It's our story as well as yours.'