So she resolved to go to the window of another room, and call him from there.

It was so much nicer to have somebody to talk to than to lie awake in bed with the burning pain in her hand.

She opened the door very gently and went through the nursery, which did not look into the garden, to go to the other window.
But when she came to the foot of the old staircase there was the moon shining down from some window high up, and making the worm-eaten oak look very strange and delicate and lovely.

In a moment she was putting her little feet one after the other in the silvery path up the stair, looking behind as she went, to see the shadow they made in the middle of the silver.

Some little girls would have been afraid to find themselves thus alone in the middle of the night, but Irene was a princess.
As she went slowly up the stair, not quite sure that she was not dreaming, suddenly a great longing woke up in her heart to try once more whether she could not find the old lady with the silvery hair.