And here it was that Vincent came back.  Not the Vincent of the hawk-like imperious face, or burning eyes of desire, which had seemed to him his realest self.  But the Vincent who had come in from the porch that day in March when she had first played to him, who had smiled at her, the good, grateful, peaceful smile, and had said to her music, “Go on, go on.”  It was the same Vincent of the afternoon in Cousin Hetty’s garden when the vulture of the desire to possess had left him for a moment in peace.  Often and often he came thus as she played and leaned his head back and said, “Go on.”  And thus Marise knew he would always come.  And thus she welcomed him.

This was what was left of him in the house he had so filled with his smoky, flaming brilliance.

V

December.

They had been talking around the fire of the stars and their names and stories, she and Neale and the children.  Presently interest overcoming inertia they decided to go out and see if the clouds had blown away so that the stars could be seen.  They huddled on hastily found wraps, thrust their feet into flapping, unbuckled overshoes, and leaving the still, warm, lamp-lit room, they shuffled out, laughing and talking, into the snow which lay thick and still before the house.

At first they carried out between them so much of the house atmosphere that it hung about them like warm fog, shielding them from the fiercely pure, still cold of the air, and from the brilliant glitter of the myriad-eyed black sky.  They went on talking and laughing, pointing out the constellations they knew, and trying to find others in the spangled vault over their heads.

“A bear!” cried Mark.  “I could draw a better bear than that any day!” And from Paul, “They can call it Orion’s belt all they want to, but there’s no belt to it!” And from Elly, “Aldebaran!  Aldebaran!  Red-eyed Aldebaran!”

But little by little the house-air began to be thinned about them, to blow away from between them in wisps and wreathes, off into the blackness.  The warmed, lighted house dwindled to nothing.  There were only the great cold black sky and the small cold white earth.  Their voices were lowered; they stood very still, close together, their heads tipped back, their faces and hearts upraised silently to receive the immensity above and about them.

Elly murmured under her breath, “Doesn’t it seem funny, our world being just one of all those, and such a little one, and here we are, just these few of us, standing on the world and looking at it all.”

Marise thought, “We seem to be the only living things in all creation.”  In that huge, black, cold glittering universe how tiny was the little glow of life they made!

Tiny but unquenchable!  Those myriads of hard staring eyes could not look down the immortal handful of human life and love which she and Neale had created between them.