THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
asked where we were going, and I didn't want to say—not then."
The words sank into his mind. He received the clear impression that she had some thought beyond the moon and the night; but it did not occur to him as a discovery, nor as being in any way strange, no more than it seemed strange to be poised here on a ledge between heaven and earth. He had come up to these things too gradually. He was, indeed, far off the ordinary tracks men follow, far, far away from the usual happenings of life. Yet once leap up to the high plane of the unusual and all lesser marvels upon it follow as a matter of course.
He had hardly time to get breath before she had risen to her feet. The ledge where they stood stopped on the right, cut off like a shelf. On the left it followed the sweep of the stone above, disappearing into the thin knife of shadow; but it was not in this direction Blanche looked, but up at the rock itself. Too near to take in the aspect of the face, the outline of the Sphinx nevertheless appeared undistorted. The side pieces jutted and overhung the thick column that was the throat; the shoulders swelled from this, a slippery, wicked-looking surface to travel for the bold soul who might aspire to clasp her neck. The overlapping wrinkles of stone had been wrought upon by centuries of
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