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"Oh God," she prayed, "stop the music!"

It did not stop just then, but a little later. The night was suddenly healed with silence. Her heart found balm in the smell of the dew; leaning out of the window she could smell the dew, and it was comforting as the smell of a friend. The night was black round Conster, with the tall, shadowing trees and the waters ebbed from the valley. Only when she lifted her eyes could she see the stars above the hill—Starvencrow Hill, it was called, and she knew the lines of it as well as the lines of her own body. She watched the lines of the hill and of the strip of firmament above, the firmament of the northern constellations, where the Plough heels slowly round the polestar, and Cassiopœia sits glimmering in her chair, and Pegasus lights the corners of a black field.

Many times she and Simon had watched the stars from this window, telling their names and counting them in their bunches. When she thought of Simon she could pray. . . . It was no longer just a prayer of relief, for the music to stop, but the prayer of her own voice talking to God: "Oh God, Thou hast become my firmament and my refuge, and in Thee will I put my trust. . . . Oh God, my firmament . . ."