CHAPTER XV
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 erethey 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 wiserand 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.”