They watched, in a breathless fascination.
Still farther back, beyond those shadows, something began to glow in the depths of a night that cleared to transparent blackness, a ball of fire, of living light that pulsed with intense incandescence in an uttermost remoteness. And, as they watched, it divided itself, split into two smaller spheres that circled about each other, throwing out flames that reached like clutching arms in vain endeavour to reëstablish unity. For an incomputable period--it seemed æons to those souls who watched--they circled, held in mutual attraction and yet still apart despite the reaching streamers. And then slowly, slowly, they approached--their light heightening to a yet more vivid brightness as they drew near....
The crystal globe slipped from numbed fingers into the fireplace. As though roused from a dream by the crash of its contact with the brass curb, the girl started and turned to her companion. He picked up the crystal, starred and fissured with its fall--henceforth useless.
“Oh, Jim!” she cried in poignant regret. “We shall not see---- What is going to happen _this_ time?”
She held his hand between her two, gazed up into his face in fond anxiety, yearned out to him.
He put down the crystal, drew her close, enfolded her.
“Love!” he answered. “Love--once more and for always! And, to us, dear, nothing else matters. It is the one reality.”
In each other’s eyes they saw, with a perception transcending physical vision, the divine light of those sundered spheres that drew together.
Two French officers, wearing the red velvet bands of the medical service upon their caps, followed an old woman down the staircase of a pleasant villa-residence on the outskirts of Mainz.
“The bedrooms will suit perfectly,” said the elder of the two officers, a major, in German. “And now a sitting-room?”
The old woman led them along a passage and, without a word, threw open the door of a room lined with books. The two officers entered, looked about them.
They were startled by a man’s voice behind them.
They turned to see a tall civilian, pince-nez gleaming over exceptionally blue eyes, fair moustache, fair hair cut short and brushed up straight from a square forehead, smiling at them from the doorway.