In a hollow concealed by sage, not ten minutes' walk from the Ferry inn,
unknown to the map-maker and innocent of all use, lay a perfect floor for
evening pacing with one's eyes upon the stars. It was the death mask of an
ancient lake, done in purest alkali silt, and needing only the shadows
cast by a low moon to make the illusion almost unbelievable. Slow
precipitation, season after season, as the water dried, had left the lake
bed smooth as a cast in plaster. Subsequent warpings had lifted the alkali
crust into thin-lipped wavelets. But once upon the floor itself the
resemblance to water vanished. The warpings and Grumblings took the shape
of earth as made by water and baked by fire. Moya compared it to a bit of
the dead moon fallen to show us what we are coming to. They paced it
soft-footed in tennis shoes lest they should crumble its talc-like
whiteness. But they read no horoscopes, for they were shy of the future in
speaking to each other,--and they made no plans.

One evening Moya had said to Paul: "I can understand your mother so much
better now that I am a wife. I think most women have a tendency towards
the state of being _un_married. And if one had--children, it would
increase upon one very fast. A widow and a mother--for twenty years. How
could she be a wife again?"

Paul made no reply to this speech which long continued to haunt him;
especially as Moya wrote more frequently to his mother and did not offer
to show him her letters. In their evening walks she seemed distrait, and
during the day more restless.

One night of their nightly pacings she stopped and stood long, her head
thrown back, her eyes fixed upon the dizzy star-deeps. Paul waited a step
behind her, touching her shoulders with his hands. Suddenly she reeled and