Out of the silence from which the sun had passed the moon suddenly unrolled, huge and white and dry as a dead flower. A dragon-fly darting across the window and the dry white face of the moon, so gorgeously lifeless, was a gold thorn sinking into the quiet flesh of shadow.
Voices sounded from the road. The lowest branches of the trees yet trembled with light. Then the world died away in the chirping of insects and the bleat of frogs.
"I will light a lamp, darling." Mrs. Price went over to a table. She could barely be seen. The match spurted suddenly into flame, and she was plain again.
When the lamp was lit the night outside went black and the moon, now vast and green and strange, rushed gorgeously against the lifted window pane.
Lamplight sucked at the shadows but could not draw them utterly to itself so that the corners of the big room remained vague and only here and there some object gave out a grudging glint.
Mrs. Price was stiff but shaken and gentle. "Now, Winnie, darling, tell me what has made you like this." She came to the bed and looked down.
Winnie threw back her head and, with closed eyes, plucked at the bedclothes. "I can't tell you."
"Are you unhappy? Has something happened between you and your husband, my child? You must be fair to me, Winnie."
Winnie rocked herself. "Oh, I can't tell. What would be the use? I can't tell."
"What am I to do, Winnie?"