They turned together, tall woman behind tall man, the crest of her copper curls on a level with his eyes. Thus they traversed together the great length of the room. Once she paused, mechanically to draw a bunch of dead roses from a dried-up vase—roses placed there, God knows how many summers ago! He marked the action by a glance. Almost unconsciously she lifted the powdering flowers to her lips, inhaling their faint, ghostly fragrance.
As they passed the window recess where, unknown to the new-comers, he had been sitting at his work, he stopped in his turn to lay a paper-weight on the loose sheets that were scattered on the table. A great map, from Hevelius’s Atlas of the Stars, lay outspread, and displayed its phantom-like constellation figures. Ellinor bent down to look.
“See,” said he gravely, placing his finger on the regal crown that the genial old astronomer had lovingly designed for Corona Borealis—“see, it is there that the new star has come into being; a fresh gem to the Crown of the North, fairer even, with its sapphire glance, than Margarita the pearl——”
She looked up, inquiringly:
“Your star?”
“My star,” he answered.
Her words pleased him, and he marked the earnest brilliancy of her blue eyes. His answering look, though unconsciously, was tender as a caress; and she felt it most sweetly. The crumbling rose-leaves scattered themselves in powder upon his papers. She brushed them impatiently away with a superstitious feeling that the past was already too much with her, too much with him. And as she leaned over the table, the live, real, blushing rose that she had gathered in the courtyard that morning loosened itself from her bosom and fell softly on the outmost sheet of the manuscript notes. Here David’s hand had sketched boldly the wreath-like constellation that had borne him an unexpected blossom.
Ellinor saw her flower lie upon it with pleasure.
“Could Hevelius have seen his crown so enriched—but it is given to few to chronicle a name in the Heavens! A star may appear and then wane, but not this one, not this one!” He spoke half to himself.
“When was the last great star born?” she asked.