For some seconds the stars seemed to go out of the sky. I seemed to be, not sitting with him on that earth-wall by Le Port gap, but to be standing again in the drive of Ker Annic, with the glare of a touring-car thrown up from the ground and Jennie Aird by my side. I seemed to see again her parted lips, to hear that soft intake of her breath. And his own face seemed to hang again like a beautiful mask suspended in the glow. And when I had descended from my room again I had found him lurking in the bushes, gazing into the lighted house. Stars in the night above us! Was that to be the next thing to happen? Had it happened? Evidently something had happened, and had happened during the past two hours. Then, as I strove to grasp the immense possibility, a deep and hapless yearning flooded my heart. The loveliness, the loveliness of it had it been possible! She, with the dreams still unrubbed from her opening eyes, he a December primrose peeping up anew out of the roots of his wrecked and fruitless years--they would have been matchlessly coupled. Had he in truth been my son I could have desired no more for him than this. Yet why do I say "had it been possible"? Possible or impossible, something, whether more beautiful or fatal I could not say, had in fact happened. Whether to her or not, it had happened to him. How else explain that treacherous little slip about his money? Up to then his memory had not failed him. Reticence he had shown, a youthful unwillingness to talk about himself, but not in order to conceal an impaired faculty. His account of his movements during the past month had been slight, but complete enough. One gap only--the Julia gap--he found unaccountable, and that was no enigma to me. But was he now on the eve of yet another transformation? Had one look of eyes into eyes hastened him to another stage? Absolved he was; was he now to be, not merely absolved, but confirmed in all the beauty and liberty of that absolution? Consider it as I tried to consider it, sitting on that thymy earth-wall while Fréhel, like a ghostly clock, threw those wavering false dawns across the night. Julia, by her ruthless act, had But Jennie had now seen him despoiled him of ten years as Julia had seen him more of his life. than twenty years ago. That act of hers constituted the But should another gap now come gap that, try as he would, his heart would understand. he could not account for. In some dark and hidden way He was now beautiful, grave, Julia had taken upon herself innocent and unafraid. his burden of sin. Julia, darkly machinating, was But Jennie, as spotless as he, counting on waylaying him knew nothing of machination. again, and yet again.