Mildred’s interest pierces me. Philip sits heavy at her side, a little closer since I left my chair.
Before me is the night.—Well, why not look? Behind me, the real, the light: my dear ones. As I move across the floor, my eyes, ere they have looked, are heavy and are strained.
“There is nothing to see.”
The words have come ere my eyes truly saw if there was nothing to see. It is as if my will spoke the words ... lying words?... My mother nods, content. Mildred bends toward Philip. Father smokes and Mr. Fayn taps his foot on the floor.
“Will you know,” the low warm voice of Philip, “how to look for the dawn at midnight?”
“You have told us,” Mildred thrums her guitar. “It will rise perpendicular like a flaming arrow.”
“From where?”
“From the deep.”
“From the deep below the mountain.”
“If I see,” said I, “any signs in the blackness, any stirring in the night, will that not be the dawn?”