“Nothing.”
“Can you not tell me, your sister?”
He stood with slouched shoulders and face darkened in the shadows. The candle smoked and flickered on the mantel-shelf; the books glimmered gilt-lettered in the gloom like parables half cloaked in mystery.
“I am very weary of all this,” he said.
“When you have done so splendidly!”
“Splendidly, indeed!”
“Yes.”
“It was not I, but the soul of another in me.”
“Still these dark sayings.”
“All is dark, dear, save for the stars in the vault, and I have one star.”