“See, see,” he cried, “how they fade, how they melt away! Freedom is ours!” Now he flung his arm around her and strained her to his breast. To be held to his heart and feel the passion of his embrace—it ought to have brought to her that sweet ecstasy of trouble, which to a pure woman is sacred to her only love. But to Ellinor this moment was perhaps the cruellest of her life. Must love remain to her ever but a dream, that only in dream, or in delirium, she should be wooed! Her dominant thought, however, was still for David. She saw him, like the sleep-walker of the legend, advancing along a perilous bridge beneath which lay the chasm of madness or death. “Oh, God,” she cried in her soul, “let not mine be the hand to thrust him down!” Then, as if in answer to her prayer, there came upon her through the open window, like a promise of peace, the vision of the night’s sky. Just against the black edge of the tower, emerging even as she looked, appeared pure and bright and steady the effulgent light of the new star. “See, David,” she said, and turned his face from its ardent seeking of her own, “there are the stars, there is your Star, looking in upon us! Shall we not go and look at her from the tower. Surely she is even more radiant than usual!” For a second his passion resisted the gentle touch; then all at once she felt his frenzied grasp relax. She drew a long breath! She slipped from his relaxing hold as the mother slips her arm from under her sleeping child. A change came over his face; a wistful expression of struggle and doubt as between reason and madness. But the next instant the wild light flamed up again. “The star!” he whispered, then loudly repeated: “My star!” and stretched out his arms to it, with the airy unmeasured gesture of the delirious. Her heart stood still. Like a fire or a fever, his exaltation had but leaped up the higher for the momentary check. “Ellinor, my star! The world’s desire, my love—I come to you!” He made a spring towards the window, and paused. With arms still wide outstretched, he looked like some god poised before taking wing for endless space. She flung herself against him, and forced him back from the window. “David—Beloved...!” And, almost with relief, she felt the second danger of his passion close round her again. “My star!” he repeated exultingly. His voice rang out now with high unnatural note, now sank to rapid whispering. “Sweet miracle—the star that shines in my sky and walks in beauty beside me! You remember, you remember, Ellinor,” he whispered, “we had met already, that first night, spirit to spirit, my soul to yours, O Star, before we met in the flesh!” He laughed in joy, and she felt the scalding tears rush up to her eyes. “Ah, poor David!”