t, his life had not been wholly
vain. For very surely that which survives when all other passions are
uprooted and cast forth--survives even in the case of the true ascetic
and saint--is the unquenchable yearning for the spoken approval of
those whom we love and have loved.

And so, pushed by his poverty of self-esteem, Julius March, throwing a
plaid on over his cassock, went out and paced the gray quarries beside
Katherine Calmady.

On one hand rose the dark, rectangular masses of the house, crowned by
its stacks of slender, twisted chimneys. On the other lay the
indefinite and dusky expanse of the park and forest. The night was very
clear. The stars were innumerable--fierce, cold points of pulsing
light.--Orion's jeweled belt and sword flung wide against the
blue-black vault. Cassiopeia seated majestic in her golden chair.
Northward, above the walled gardens, the Bear pointing to the diamond
flashing of the Pole star. While across all high heaven, dusty with
incalculable myriads of worlds, stretched the awful and mysterious
highroad of the Milky-Way. The air was keen and tonic though so still.
An immense and fearless quiet seemed to hold all things--a quiet not of
sleep, but of conscious and perfect equilibrium, a harmony so sustained
and complete that to human ears it issued, of necessity, in silence.

And that silence Lady Calmady was in no haste to break. Twice she and
her companion walked the length of the terrace, and back, before she
spoke. She paused, at length, just short of the arcade of the further
garden-hall.

"This great peace of the night puts all violence of feeling to the
blush," she said. "One perceives that a thousand years are very really
as one day. That calms one--with a vengeance."

Katherine waited, looking out over the vague landscape, clasping the
fur-bordered edges of her cloak with either hand. It appeared to Julius
that both her voice and the expression of her face were touched with
irony.

"There is nothing new under the sun," she went on, "nor under the
'visiting moon,' nor under those somewhat heartless stars. Does it
occur to you, Julius, how hopelessly unoriginal we are, how we all
follow in the same beaten track? What thousands of men and women have
stood, as you and I stand now, at once calmed--as I admit that I
am--and rendered not a little homeless by the realisation of their own
insignificance in face of the sleeping earth and this brooding
immensity of space! _A quoi bon,