"Goodness gracious!" cried the voice quite querulously, "what human being ever wanted to watch a moonrise alone?"
Joan chuckled, and sat down to the first conversation she had enjoyed since her last one with Stefan Nikolai—one of the few real conversations, she thought afterwards, in her life.
Yet it was difficult to remember the many things they talked about. Smoke, for one. He pointed out the dim loveliness of the city below, towers and battlements and the airy span of a bridge against the gray-gold sky.
"'Many-storied Camelot town,'" he said, musing. "Without the shrouding smoke, what would it be? Factory chimneys, iron smoke-stacks, a filtration plant—Ugliness, ugliness! Yet there are people in that town who want to rid themselves of those billowing mists of rose and violet and silver."
"I suppose," said Joan, "the beauty of smoke depends upon whether you're down in it, getting smuts on your nose, or looking on from a hilltop."
"A question of perspective, you think? Hmnn—yes. Well, then" he said reasonably, "by all means get your perspective. Stick to the hilltop—especially at sunset."
"We haven't all got wings to reach a hilltop with, you see. Nor yet automobiles."
"I haven't, myself," he said. "I use trolley-cars.... Did it ever occur to you what a marvel the trolley-car is? For a nickel—or at most a dime—all Nature is yours to command; beechwoods in their autumn field of the cloth of gold; little whispering streams breaking their winter silence, fireflies dancing—to the tune of the 'Merry Widow' waltz," (as that melody of the moment made itself audible from the house beyond). "What a twilight! Fireflies, an afterglow, and the moonrise set to music, all at once," he said under his breath. "And some one to share them with!"
Joan was silent, flattered by the knowledge that this whimsical gentleman was letting her into his thoughts.
"The beauty of such a moment is that one never loses it," he mused. "One puts it away as people press flowers in books, to be looked at when—when pleasant things need remembering. I thank God for a mind well stocked with beautiful occasions!"