Some of the pictures that came to her as she sat there were vivid, as real as life itself, and some were as indistinct as a mirage on the far horizon.
A hearse in the moonlight. “A sign.” She shuddered. “A hearse with two black horses and a coffin.” Again she shuddered.
But now it was gone. Instead there was a sloping hillside where little streams rushed from beneath dark canopies of mountain ivy. The dark clouds turned white under the powerful light.
“Will it ever be?” She dared to hope now. “Will our moving picture succeed?” Tom Tobin had inspired her. She could see his face on the clouds. Young, slender, eager, full of vitality, he invited hope as sunshine invites a bud to become a flower.
But now in a cavern of the darkened clouds a great trunk yawned. Out from it, like a jack-in-the-box, leaped a little yellow man with long ears. “He wants that bell, those banners. He risks everything to get them. I wonder why?” She mused for a moment; then the scene in this fairyland of clouds changed once more.
A slender white cloud curled upward. Its tip became a rope that rose higher, higher, higher, toward a dark night sky. Up that rope a figure appeared to glide. “He did go up!” she whispered hoarsely. “I saw him!”
The airplane beacon swung about. The sky went black. It became dark waters, and on those waters were two boats gliding one after the other, moving silently out to sea.
“That long-eared one,” she murmured, “he is everywhere at once.
“But Florence—” A smile played about her lips. “Florence and that white man from China. How romantic to be out there with him beneath the moon all alone! Surely one may endure mystery, suspense, anything, if it leads to romance!”
Strangely enough, the night sky took on a tinge of green. In this she saw a frail child of France garbed all in green and gold. Her eyes opened wide. It was her very own self.