"Always there, Little Chap."
The voice was far, and getting further.
"How—how d'you feel?"
"Why, as I never felt before," chuckling still.
For long he lay still, the night gathering about him. Then the voice came again out of the darkness.
"Ah! there's the first star!"
He lay with hands folded, and face starward. He was drinking in the dark as it began to people, and humming to himself. Kit, listening with all his heart, heard as it were the voice of one singing in Eternity. And whether his ear heard words, or whether only his heart heard the song the other's heart was singing, he never knew.
"Hark to her, hark to the Voice of the Beautiful Spring,
Calling to come,
Calling to come,
Over the moon-whitened wave on a kittiwake's wing,
Over the foam,
Furrow and foam,
Leap to her, leap, O my heart, when thou hearest her sing,
Home to her, home,
Home to her, home."