Ducdame

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SOME of the most significant encounters in the world occur between two persons one of whom is asleep or dead; and it might almost seem as if Rook Ashover had recognized this fact when he found himself standing by Netta Page’s side on the night of November’s fullest moon. Netta herself, before they went to bed, had drawn the curtain back and pulled up the blind; and she was now lying with her face illuminated and her soul, as it were, exposed. Rook looked at her with fixed intensity‚ as if he were striving to solve some long-withheld riddle; some riddle to which a night of this kind could alone bring the solution.

The effect of the moonlight on Netta’s face was interesting. It was even complicated. It emphasized a certain haggardness, a certain battered, woebegone pitifulness in her; but it also endowed her with a touching and patient dignity.

She had never been beautiful; never even pretty; but as she lay now, with the breath coming evenly through her scarcely parted lips, there was something about her that would have arrested and held the attention of almost any onlooker.

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