Yet, though he could detect
no slightest movement, he was keenly aware that other things beside
the stars were looking at him. The night was full of carefully-
screened eyes, all fixed upon him. Framed in the lighted window, he
was so easily visible. Night herself, calm and majestic, gazed down
upon him through wide-open lids that filled the entire sky. He felt
the intentness of her steadfast gaze, and paused. He stopped. It
seemed that everything stopped too. So striking, indeed, was the
sensation, that he gave expression to it half aloud:
"It's slowing up," he murmured, "stopping!... I do believe! Hm!..."
There was no answer this time, no sign of echo anywhere, but he heard
an owl calling its muffled note from the Wood without a Centre.
"It's probably seen me too," he thought, and then it also stopped.
He waited a moment, hoping it would begin again, for he loved the
atmosphere of childhood that the sound invoked in him. But the flutey
call was not repeated. He drew his head in, closed and bolted the
window, fastened the shutters carefully and pulled the curtains over;
then he extinguished the lamps, lit his candle, and moved out softly
into the hall on his way upstairs.
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