‘Let what into you, Charley?’
‘The night and the blue and the stars.’
‘Why don’t you, then?’
‘I hate being taken in. The more pleasant a self-deception, the less I choose to submit to it.’
‘That is reasonable. But where lies the deception?’
‘I don’t say it’s a deception. I only don’t know that it isn’t.’
‘Please explain.’
‘I mean what you call the beauty of the night.’
‘Surely there can be little question of that?’
‘Ever so little is enough. Suppose I asked you wherein its beauty consisted: would you be satisfied if I said—In the arrangement of the blue and the white, with the sparkles of yellow, and the colours about the scarce visible moon?’