Hence the moon wore to him a sorrowful face, and he felt a vague sympathy in her regard, that of one who was herself in trouble, half the light of her lord's countenance withdrawn.

For science had not for him interfered with the shows of things by a partial revelation of their realities.

He had not learned that the face of the moon is the face of a corpse-world; that the sadness upon it is the sadness of utter loss; that her light has in it no dissolved smile, is but the reflex from a lifeless mirror; that of all the orbs we know best she can have least to do with lovers' longings and losses, she alone having no love left in her--the cold cinder of a quenched world.

Not an out-burnt cinder, though! she needs but to be cast again into the furnace of the sun.
As it was, Richard had gazed at her hardly for a minute when he found the tears running down his face, and starting up, ashamed of the unmanly weakness, hardly knew what he was doing before he found himself in the open air.

From the hall clock came the first stroke of twelve as he closed the door behind him.