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SOMEWHERE OR NOWHERE ?.
?
The sun was very bright, but I doubted if the day would long be fine, and looked into the milky sapphire I wore, to see whether the star in it was clear.

It was even less defined than I had expected.

I rose from the breakfast-table, and went to the window to glance at the stone again.
There had been heavy rain in the night, and on the lawn was a thrush breaking his way into the shell of a snail.
As I was turning my ring about to catch the response of the star to the sun, I spied a keen black eye gazing at me out of the milky misty blue.
The sight startled me so that I dropped the ring, and when I picked it up the eye was gone from it.

The same moment the sun was obscured; a dark vapour covered him, and in a minute or two the whole sky was clouded.