Midnight was at hand; a church clock in the neighborhood had chimed the quarter. The footfalls in the street grew few and infrequent. London, vast, palpitating giant, had turned from toil to brief, healthless sleep. Her myriad fires burned dim under the stars. Her great heart slackened from the moil of greed and care.
The man before the lamp labored and bent his brows. Papers and a few books were squandered on the table, while under the lamp stood a bowl of golden primroses, children of joy, fair stars of the dawning year. The man’s pen scratched feverishly over the paper. Often he would pause, stare at the lamp, glance at the golden flowers, and smile. His eyes were lustreless and heavy, his face thin. From time to time he would take up a written page, stare at the scrawled and erasured sheet, smite out a word with a stroke of the pen, sigh, and toss the page aside with a twinge of despair.
As the clock chimed midnight the door opened, and a girl in a red gown came in from the dark landing. Her hair, noosed with a strand of blue, poured over her white ears and about her shapely throat. There were shadows under her eyes; she looked thinner and more ethereal than of yore; the June freshness upon her face had faded to a more pearly gleam.
A brighter lustre kindled in the man’s tired eyes. The vision was gracious and fair to him as some green and dewy garden in a golden desert. He leaned back from his labor, took a deep breath as to fill his heart with the breath of youth. Joan came softly towards him, adorable as love moving amid summer roses. The room with all its ugly penury seemed transformed by the glamour of her presence there.
She stood behind his chair, pillowing his head upon her breast, bending her face to his, so that her hair shone bright about his forehead.
“Dear, you are working too late.”
“Am I?”
“You look tired to death.”
“Not yet,” he answered her, smiling in her eyes. “Can I tire with love at my right hand?”
“Ah,” she said, touching his hair with her white fingers, “you try yourself too much; come with me, and sleep.”