The moon was at her last quarter, a pale thin sickle that shone and
disappeared and reappeared in a mass of hastily scudding cloud. During
that eclipse obscurity fell on the air, and a yet vaster quietude
enveloped the earth. Then the sickle reappeared, and with it more than
the darkness lifted. Something even more mysterious than darkness
vanished intermittently; that brooding as of an infinite presence
seemed to recede, and the normal world, beautiful and comprehended,
came silverly to the view.
Through these glooms and visions Deirdre fled, observing every shadow
as a hare does, who, knowing that this shade is a danger and that one
a protection, ventures a pace or stays as his hard-won knowledge bids
him.
A cloud of such a size meant a shadow of such a duration. This cloud
will carry one across the lawn, and when it has passed, the trees
yonder will be won and their desired shade. From the south another
cloud was coming, bulky as a two-acre field and buoyant as a gossamer.
Folded in its gloom the wall could be crossed and the shelter of trees
or of long grass reached before the moon came riding, delicately, in a
radiance that was one half silver and one half blue.
So she fled. The lark watching from a dew-drenched covert was not more
discreet as it turned again to the slumber that she had broken; and
when she took the wall the bat that whirled from it made more noise
than she did.
At times, when there was neither light nor dark, a world of grey and
purple that was thirty feet high and fifteen feet around enclosed
her in. And she stretched her ears towards the bounds of that small
universe before she ventured another step.
Wonderful and terrifying were these dim oases of vision; and across
them, coming from no place and dallying a moment ere they went on to
nowhere, more silent than the night itself and as incomprehensible,
grey moths were flitting; dim as ghosts they were, and as aloof;
beating a tireless gauze on no errand, tacking back and forth, and
disappearing in one flirt of a noiseless wing. Small creatures seemed
to wait until her foot must fall on them, and then, with a sound that
lasted for two long seconds of panic, they were gone; they disappeared,
and the world was utterly empty of them. At these sounds she stood, her
heart beating up at her throat and a sense of angry despair flooding
over and about her. Then she moved again; slipping into and out of
shadows as featly as the moonbeam slipped into and out of a cloud.
She knew where she was going, but not what she was going to do. She
would see him again because she must, and after that, if there was more
to be done the time to do it would bring the doing. But the one large
apprehension was as yet sufficient for her mind--that she would see him
again, and that they would talk together. She was sure that this time
he would speak to her, and that whatever he said would be wiser and
sweeter and stranger than any words she had yet listened to; and she
wondered, without thought, what his magical utterance would mean and
how it could possibly be replied to; knowing yet that her replies were
already formed, and that the only word she need utter until she died
was the word “yes.”