Most of the night before the banquet the young girl lay awake. The faint light of the andon flowed across her, melting into soft grayness at the far end of the room. It ruled, as with a heavy pencil, the overlapping boards of the ceiling. She counted them, but to no purpose. Sleep perched higher. "A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,--one after one; bees murmuring--" she quoted under her breath, and lay still as a fallen rose. Sleep grinned down from the small, high branches of night. She thought of dark running water, of a green curtain stretched across nothingness, of a deep, bottomless pool; but sleep, the raven, never stirred a feather. Beside her bed, on the soft, matted floor, lay a white prayer-book, a tiny vase containing a few sprays of umé (plum-flower), and a chatelaine watch set with pearls. The watch had been a graduation present from Gwendolen. From time to time Yuki lifted the animated toy, turned its face toward the andon, and held it to her ear, only to fall back with a smothered sigh. "Will the blessed daylight never come?" thought Yuki for the hundredth time. Just as she had relinquished all hope of it, slumber darted down, but in its harsh beak was a dream. She wandered, silent, on a great black moor. Near her feet, as she moved, a dull light flickered, turning all the dry grass red, and making, as it were, a muffled pathway for her guidance. She was searching, searching, searching,--for what, for whom, she could not recall. Her memory was darkened like the moor, and its dull flashes showed alike only empty space. Suddenly, far off to the right, a steadier beacon sprang. Stars seemed to be climbing up by a stair as yet invisible. The moor quivered into an even glow,--a mist rising as from a sea of blood. Not fifty paces from her eyes stood Pierre. He smiled, and stretched out his arms to her. The red glare whitened as it fell on him. Then she knew for what she had been searching. She would have fled to him, but found she could not move at all.