Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/305

 CHAPTER XXV

HAT night Garth went to bed sorrowing that a white, plastered ceiling should be above him, instead of a canopy of stars. Downstairs the lighthouse door stood open to the warm night wind and soft darkness. The light of the student-lamp reached no farther than the threshold, and the doorway framed a square cut from the purple evening. Outside the water lapped and washed with that perpetual murmur which made a changeless undertone to existence at Silver Shoal. Jim closed his book and looked across a lamplit round of table at his wife and Joan.

"It's a dull book," he said. "Read something aloud, Elspeth."

Obedient, she read, and the music of her reading filled the little room with soft delight and Joan's heart with a deep content. Jim, smoking and gazing dreamily at the scattered stars beyond the window, stood up suddenly with an 283