The Dark Star

The absurd beating of his heart choked him as he stammered her name;

he dropped his head beside her hot and half hidden cheek. And, after a

long, long time, her face stirred on his breast, turned a very little

toward him, and her young lips melted against his.

So they stood through the throbbing silence in the slowly darkening

room, while the street outside echoed with the interminable trample of

passing cavalry, and the dim capital lay like a phantom city under the

ghostly lances of the searchlights as though probing all Heaven to the

very feet of God in search of reasons for the hellish crime now

launched against the guiltless Motherland.

And high among the planets sped the dark star, Erlik, unseen by men,

rushing through viewless interstellar space, hurled out of nothing by

the Prince of Hell into the nothing toward which all Hell is speeding,

too; and whither it shall one day fade and disappear and pass away

forever.

* * * * *

"My darling----"

"Oh, Jim--I have loved you all my life," she whispered. And her young

arms crept up and clung around his neck.

"My darling Rue--my little Rue Carew----"

Outside the window an officer also spoke through the unbroken clatter

of passing horsemen which filled the whole house with a hollow roar.

But she heard her lover's voice alone as in a hushed and magic world;

and in her girl's enchanted ears his words were the only sounds that

stirred a heavenly quiet that reigned between the earth and stars.