nothing.” Prokop put his arms round her as if he were her uncle and not knowing what to say muttered something to the effect that she was a good girl and wonderfully lovable; upon which the sobs changed to long sighs (he felt somewhere on his arm a hot dampness) and it was all right. O Night, Queen of heaven, you lighten the breast of the aflicted and loosen the heavy tongue; you quicken, bless, endow with wings the quietly beating heart, oppressed and silent; the thirsty can drink of your endlessness. At some tiny point of space, somewhere between the pole and the Southern Cross, the Centaur and Lyra, something tender is taking place; some man for no reason at all feels himself to be the sole protector of this girl, with her face moist with tears, strokes her head and says—what exactly?—that he is so happy, so happy, that he loves so dearly, so terribly dearly this creature which is sobbing on his shoulder, that he will never leave her, and so on, in that vein.
“I don’t know what happened to me,” said Annie through her tears. “I—I so wanted to talk to you before . . .”
“And why did you cry?” asked Prokop.
“Because you took such a long time to come to me,” ran the surprising answer.
Something in Prokop weakened, the will or something of the sort. “Do . . . you . . . love me?” he said with difficulty, and his voice was as confused as that of a boy of thirteen. The head buried itself in his shoulder quickly and nodded.
“Perhaps . . . I should have come to you,” whispered Prokop, crestfallen. The head shook de-
