Page:Son of the wind.djvu/253

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ET DEAM VIDIMUS

revisited. He recalled it, as he recalled the Sphinx's window, something belonging in past time; and he had no wish to lead her back to the discussion that had been theirs. No doubt she was in his hand now, an instrument easy to use; but she had ceased altogether to appear to him as an instrument. If he drew her on to talk now, his ulterior purpose was to watch the play of expression around her mouth, and the change in her eyes from alertness into dreams. His nature continued to fulfil itself. He continued to bend every faculty of mind and will to the pursuit of one thing, making everything else tributary to it. The only difference was that imperceptibly, in ways so gradual he was unaware of them, his object had changed. She had become the object.

Sometimes they raced the early moon—early, before the red had disappeared from the west—and stood beneath the Witch's Spindle silent, saw the bent form, like a human being, and felt themselves beneath the arms of fate. But never the later moon. She would not be out in the dark hours. Reminded of the floodtide of night, she offered excuse of the increasing veil of cloud; when that was gone then they might, perhaps, but each night it gathered a little deeper, and a chill came with it that whispered of winter, something to be thought of with a shiver in

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