CHAPTER XXV
THE FLUTE AT NIGHT: JIM GOES ASHORE
THAT night Garth went to bed sorrowing that a white, plastered ceiling should be above him, instead of a canopy of stars. Downstairs the lighthouse door stood open to the warm night wind and soft darkness. The light of the student-lamp reached no farther than the threshold, and the doorway framed a square cut from the purple evening. Outside the water lapped and washed with that perpetual murmur which made a changeless undertone to existence at Silver Shoal. Jim closed his book and looked across a lamplit round of table at his wife and Joan.
"It's a dull book," he said. "Read something aloud, Elspeth."
Obedient, she read, and the music of her reading filled the little room with soft delight and Joan's heart with a deep content. Jim, smoking and gazing dreamily at the scattered stars beyond the window, stood up suddenly with an
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