Inâh! Etó! E-hó! The bridge of stars spans the vast lake of air; the sun and the moon
travel over it. *       *       *       *       *

My shadow is turning dark; I can scarcely see the doctor, but now--God
have mercy!--_I can touch him._

       *       *       *       *       *

All the high spectres are stooping from the clouds, bending above me to
watch. I know them and their eyes of shadow--I know them now; Hârpen
that was to Chaské what Hárpstinâ shall be to Hapéda; and Hârka shall
come after all with the voice of winter winds:

"Aké u, aké u, aké u!" But the magic second shall never return. "Mâ cânté maséca!" *       *       *       *       *

Now they leave my bed, the people who crowded there under the shadowy
forms of the spectres; now the doctor bends over; I see and feel him. His hands are tangled in the threads of time; he is cutting a thread;
he----


XIX. When I spoke to him first I spoke in the French language. Before he
answered, the scream of a blue jay in the elms outside set my nerves
aquiver, and I called for Donald and Walter. As I lay there I could see the Aspen hills from the window, heaps
of crumpled gold bathed in sunshine. Over them sailed the froth from
the silken milkweed; over them drifted the big brown-red butterflies,
luminous as richest autumn leaves. Some one closed the door softly. The doctor had gone. The sunlight poured into the window, etching my shadow on the wall
behind. Lying very still there I saw it motionless beside me. _The
shadow was black._

Somebody said in the next room, "Will he die?" "Die?" I said aloud. A bird twittered outside my window. The door opened again, noiselessly. "Sweetheart?" I whispered. "Yes, Jack." After a moment I said, "When do you go back to school?" "I? I finished school a year ago." "Come nearer." "I am here, Jack." "Time stopped a year ago." "A year ago to-day." The same gray eyes, the same face, paler, perhaps. "We have journeyed far," I sighed, "always together, but in those days
our shadows were white as snow. Am I going to die? There are tears in
your eyes." They fell on my cheek; her arms fell too, closer, closer, around my
neck. "Life has begun," she said. "Life? What was the year that ends to-day? The magic second of life?" "A year of death, to me!" Ah, but her soul knows of a life in death! And she shall know it,
too, when her shadow turns whiter than snow. For the Temple of Idols
has closed its doors at the sound of a voice, and an idol of gilt has
turned to flesh and blood. I-hó! So shall she know of the life in death when her soul and her body are
one. PASSEUR. O friends, I've served ye food and bed;
    O friends, the mist is rising wet;
  Then bide a moment, O my dead,
    Where, lonely, I must linger yet! PASSEUR. Because man goeth to his long home,
  And the mourners go about the streets. When he had finished his pipe he tapped the brier bowl against the
chimney until the ashes powdered the charred log smouldering across
the andirons. Then he sank back in his chair, absently touching the hot
pipe-bowl with the tip of each finger until it grew cool enough to be
dropped into his coat pocket. Twice he raised his eyes to the little American clock ticking upon the
mantel. He had half an hour to wait. The three candles that lighted the room might be trimmed to advantage;
this would give him something to do. A pair of scissors lay open
upon the bureau, and he rose and picked them up. For a while he stood
dreamily shutting and opening the scissors, his eyes roaming about the
room. There was an easel in the corner, and a pile of dusty canvases
behind it; behind the canvases there was a shadow--that gray, menacing
shadow that never moved. When he had trimmed each candle he wiped the smoky scissors on a paint
rag and flung them on the bureau again. The clock pointed to ten; he
had been occupied exactly three minutes. The bureau was littered with neckties, pipes, combs and brushes,
matches, reels and fly-books, collars, shirt studs, a new pair of
Scotch shooting stockings, and a woman's workbasket. He picked out all the neckties, folded them once, and hung them over
a bit of twine that stretched across the looking-glass; the shirt
studs he shovelled into the top drawer along with brushes, combs, and
stockings; the reels and fly-books he dusted with his handkerchief
and placed methodically along the mantel shelf. Twice he stretched out
his hand toward the woman's workbasket, but his hand fell to his side
again, and he turned away into the room staring at the dying fire. Outside the snow-sealed window a shutter broke loose and banged
monotonously, until he flung open the panes and fastened it. The soft,
wet snow, that had choked the window-panes all day, was frozen hard
now, and he had to break the polished crust before he could find the
rusty shutter hinge. He leaned out for a moment, his numbed hands resting on the snow, the
roar of a rising snow-squall in his ears; and out across the desolate
garden and stark hedgerow he saw the flat black river spreading through
the gloom. A candle sputtered and snapped behind him; a sheet of drawing-paper
fluttered across the floor, and he closed the panes and turned back
into the room, both hands in his worn pockets. The little American clock on the mantel ticked and ticked, but the
hands lagged, for he had not been occupied five minutes in all. He went
up to the mantel and watched the hands of the clock. A minute--longer
than a year to him--crept by. Around the room the furniture stood ranged--a chair or two of yellow
pine, a table, the easel, and in one corner the broad curtained bed;
and behind each lay shadows, menacing shadows that never moved. A little pale flame started up from the smoking log on the andirons;
the room sang with the sudden hiss of escaping wood gases. After a
little the back of the log caught fire; jets of blue flared up here and
there with mellow sounds like the lighting of gas-burners in a row, and
in a moment a thin sheet of yellow flame wrapped the whole charred log. Then the shadows moved; not the shadows behind the furniture--they
never moved--but other shadows, thin, gray, confusing, that came and
spread their slim patterns all around him, and trembled and trembled. He dared not step or tread upon them, they were too real; they meshed
the floor around his feet, they ensnared his knees, they fell across
his breast like ropes. Some night, in the silence of the moors, when
wind and river were still, he feared these strands of shadow might
tighten--creep higher around his throat and tighten. But even then he
knew that those other shadows would never move, those gray shapes that
knelt crouching in every corner. When he looked up at the clock again ten minutes had straggled past. Time was disturbed in the room; the strands of shadow seemed entangled
among the hands of the clock, dragging them back from their rotation. He wondered if the shadows would strangle Time, some still night when
the wind and the flat river were silent.