“No, no—there. Rigel, the upper right corner, down to the left, the Dog-star; up to Betelguese, down to the left again to Procyon, and up to the brightest of all—the stranger, not usually there—”
Spenski clutched him. “I was watching the bigger configuration, and didn't notice. Your stranger is the planet Saturn in transit between Taurus and Orion. Saturn completes the W, and the W stands for—”
“War, possibly,” said Peter.
There was a growl just now from Boylan: “Come on back to bed, you star-gazers.”
“Saturn is so far and moves so slowly,” the little man whispered, “that the W will not be deranged for many months.”
The hurry call for Kohlvihr came as expected in Fransic. The first sections of the divisions were entrained the next day—an end to summer road-work.... A day and night of intolerable slowness in a vile coach, and on the following noon the troop-train was halted, while a string of Red Cross cars drew up to a siding to give the soldiers the right of way; a momentary halt—the line of passing windows filled with cheering, weeping nurses.
Just one reposeful face—as both trains halted a second or two. It was the face of one who seemed to understand the whole sorry story, already to be contemplating the ruin ahead. Her hands were folded, the eyes intent upon the distance rather than the immediate faces of men. Mowbray could not articulate. Above all he wanted to meet her eyes, to put back the light of the present in them, but it was neither sound nor gesture that accomplished it; rather the storming intensity of anguish in his mind. His train jerked, her eyes found him, her arms raised toward him, lips parted. It became the one, above all, of the exquisite pictures in his consciousness, and the reality passed so quickly—gone, and no word between them.
Thus her colors came to him again—the mystic trinity of white and gray and black—all he had since known and loved added to the mystery of their first meeting. It was like an awakening to the rack of thirst after one has dreamed of a spring of gurgling water—the swift passing of that face of tender beauty and fortitude, that fair brow, gray eyes and black hair....
Boylan was looking deeply into his face.
“Good God, man, you're a ghost. What is it, Peter?”