After a while, as he sat there motionless, he grew aware of something delicately soft touching his ear and hair. For a moment he had the absurd fancy that Stellamaris stood beside him with caressing fingers. It became so insistent that he dallied with it, persuaded himself that she was there; he would have only to turn to see her in her childish grace. He heard a sound as of murmured speech. She seemed to whisper of quiet, far-off things. And then he seemed to hear the words: “The door is open. Go out into the wide spaces under heaven.” He roused himself with a start, and, looking about him, perceived that the door of his sitting-room was indeed ajar, the ill-fitting old lock having slipped, thus causing a draught, which poured over his head and shoulders. He rose and clapped on his hat and went down-stairs. A ten-minutes' trudge on the pavements would clear his head for the work that had to be accomplished. But on his doorstep he halted. Away above the housetops on the other side of the dingy square sailed the full moon, casting a wake of splendour along the edge of a rack of cloud. And below it swam a single star. He caught himself repeating stupidly, “Stella Maris, Star of the Sea.” With an impatient shake of the shoulders he went his way through the narrow streets and emerged upon the broad and quiet thoroughfares about the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. On Westminster Bridge the startling silver of the moonlit river brought him to a stand. The same glory was overspreading the mild sea below the windows of the Channel House. Perhaps Stella even then lay awake, as she often did of nights, and was watching it and was “breathing God.” A great longing arose within him to stand on the beach beneath her window in the wide spaces under heaven. So he walked on, thinking vaguely of Stellamaris and her ways and mysteries, and reached his home again in a chastened mood. Like Elijah, he had found God neither in the wind nor in the earthquake nor in the fire; but who can tell whether he had not been brought into touch with something of the divine by the still, small voice that came through the draught of the crazy door? CHAPTER VIII