“I believe,” he said slowly, “I can see the stars moving through your hair. No, keep still, _you_ can’t see them.” Helena lay obediently very still. “I thought I could watch them travelling, crawling like gold flies on the ceiling,” he continued in a slow sing-song. “But now you make your hair tremble, and the stars rush about.” Then, as a new thought struck him: “Have you noticed that you can’t recognize the constellations lying back like this. I can’t see one. Where is the north, even?” She laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things. She refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations, as of the wayside plants. “Why should I want to label them?” she would say. “I prefer to look at them, not to hide them under a name.” So she laughed when he asked her to find Vega or Arcturus. “How full the sky is!” Siegmund dreamed on—“like a crowded street. Down here it is vastly lonely in comparison. We’ve found a place far quieter and more private than the stars, Helena. Isn’t it fine to be up here, with the sky for nearest neighbour?” “I did well to ask you to come?” she inquired wistfully. He turned to her. “As wise as God for the minute,” he replied softly. “I think a few furtive angels brought us here—smuggled us in.” “And you are glad?” she asked. He laughed. “_Carpe diem_,” he said. “We have plucked a beauty, my dear. With this rose in my coat I dare go to hell or anywhere.” “Why hell, Siegmund?” she asked in displeasure. “I suppose it is the _postero_. In everything else I’m a failure, Helena. But,” he laughed, “this day of ours is a rose not many men have plucked.” She kissed him passionately, beginning to cry in a quick, noiseless fashion. “What does it matter, Helena?” he murmured. “What does it matter? We are here yet.” The quiet tone of Siegmund moved her with a vivid passion of grief. She felt she should lose him. Clasping him very closely, she burst into uncontrollable sobbing. He did not understand, but he did not interrupt her. He merely held her very close, while he looked through her shaking hair at the motionless stars. He bent his head to hers, he sought her face with his lips, heavy with pity. She grew a little quieter. He felt his cheek all wet with her tears, and, between his cheek and hers, the ravelled roughness of her wet hair that chafed and made his face burn. “What is it, Helena?” he asked at last. “Why should you cry?” She pressed her face in his breast, and said in a muffled, unrecognizable voice: “You won’t leave me, will you, Siegmund?” “How could I? How should I?” he murmured soothingly. She lifted her face suddenly and pressed on him a fierce kiss. “How could I leave you?” he repeated, and she heard his voice waking, the grip coming into his arms, and she was glad.