A strange apartment, the like of which she had never dreamed, this chosen haunt of her strange kinsman! Wrapt in the sables that encompassed her so warmly, her eye wandered, from the dome with its triangular slit through which a slice of sky looked ineffably remote, to the fantastic instruments (or so they seemed to her) just visible in the diffuse light, with gleams here and there of brass or silver, or milky polish of ivory.
She watched him move about, now a shadow in the shadow, now with a white flicker from the lamp upon the pale beauty of his face. She listened in the deep night’s silence, now to the inexorable dry beat of the astronomer’s clock, now to the grave music of his voice, as he spoke words which, for all her comprehension of their meaning, might have been in an unknown tongue, and yet delighted her ear.
“There is the mural circle, and yonder my altazimuth. But what I wanted to show you is to be best seen in this, the equatorial.”
Under his manipulation the machine moved with a magic softness of action—the domed roof turning with roll of wheels to let in upon them a new aspect of space. She reclined, as he bade her, on a couch. He adjusted the pointing of the mighty lens, and then she made her initiating plunge into the wonders of the skies.
First there came as it were upon her the great, black chasm before which the soul is seized with trembling, the infinitude of which the mind refuses to grasp—then a point of light or two—little fingers it seemed pointing to the gulphs—then more and more, a medley of brilliancy, of colours, torch-red, flaming orange, diamond white, sailing slowly across the black field; then, dropping straight into her brain, like the fall of a glorious gem into a pool, carrying its own light as it comes—the blue glory of Sir David’s new-born star.
Ellinor told herself, with a mingling of regret and pride, that since her soul had received the message of his star she understood David’s vocation. And, however much she might wish in the coming days to draw him back to the homely things of earth, she could never be of those now who mocked or pitied.
A little later they stood upon the open platform together, and he pointed out to her the exact place of the marvel that had just been revealed to her. Again he spoke words of little meaning to her, yet fraught it seemed in their strangeness with deeper significance than those of a familiar language; but as she listened it was upon his transfigured countenance that all her wonder hung.
“See you, there, by Alphecca. Nay, you are looking at Vega of the Lyre-Vega the beautiful she is called: no wonder she draws your eyes! But lower them, Ellinor, and look a shade to the right. Turn to Corona, the Northern Crown.”
With the abstraction of the enthusiast, he was quite unconscious that to her uninitiated ear the names could convey no sense, that to her uninitiated eye the aspect of the sky could show nothing abnormal.
“See, there, just to the right of Alphecca—oh, you see, surely, the most beautiful—my star, virgin to man, to the sight of this earth until to-night!”