oked up at the strip of sky
privileged to hang just there. He had got a bit rusty with his stars.
There, however, certainly was Venus. And he thought of how he had stood
by the ship's rail on that honeymoon trip of his twenty years ago, giving
his young wife her first lesson in counting the stars. And something
very deep down, very mossed and crusted over in John's heart, beat and
stirred, and hurt him. Nedda--he had caught her looking at that young
fellow just as Anne had once looked at him, John Freeland, now an
official fogey, an umbrella in a stand. There was a policeman! How
ridiculous the fellow looked, putting one foot before the other, flirting
his lantern and trying the area gates! This confounded scent of
hawthorn--could it be hawthorn?--got here into the heart of London! The
look in that girl's eyes! What was he about, to let them make him feel
as though he could give his soul for a face looking up into his own, for
a breast touching his, and the scent of a woman's hair. Hang it! He
would smoke a cigarette and go to bed! He turned out the light and began
to mount the stairs; they creaked abominably--the felt must be wearing
out. A woman about the place would have kept them quiet. Reaching the
landing of the second floor, he paused a moment from habit, to look down
into the dark hall. A voice, thin, sweet, almost young, said:

"Is that you, darling?" John's heart stood still. What--was that? Then
he perceived that the door of the room that had been his wife's was open,
and remembered that his mother was in there.

"What! Aren't you asleep, Mother?"

Frances Freeland's voice answered cheerfully: "Oh, no, dear; I'm never
asleep before two. Come in."

John entered. Propped very high on her pillows, in perfect regularity,
his mother lay. Her carved face was surmounted by a piece of fine lace,
her thin, white fingers on the turnover of the sheet moved in continual
interlocking, her lips smiled.

"There's something you must have," she said. "I left my door open on
purpose. Give me that little bottle, darling."

John took from a small table by the bed a still smaller bottle. Frances
Freeland opened it, and out came three tiny white globules.

"Now," she said, "pop them in! You've no idea how they'll send you to
sleep! They're the most splendid things; perfectly harmless. Just let
them rest on the tongue and swallow!"

John let them rest--they were sweetish--and swallowed.

"How is it