'I wonder how it is you have such a fine natural perfume,' he said,
always in the same abstract, inquiring tone of happiness.

'Haven't all women?' she replied, and the peculiar penetrating twang of
a brass reed was again in her voice.

'I don't know,' he said, quite untouched. 'But you are scented like
nuts, new kernels of hazel-nuts, and a touch of opium....' He remained
abstractedly breathing her with his open mouth, quite absorbed in her.

'You are so strange,' she murmured tenderly, hardly able to control her
voice to speak.

'I believe,' he said slowly, 'I can see the stars moving through your
hair. No, keep still, _you_ can't see them.' Helena lay obediently very
still. 'I thought I could watch them travelling, crawling like gold
flies on the ceiling,' he continued in a slow sing-song. 'But now you
make your hair tremble, and the stars rush about.' Then, as a new
thought struck him: 'Have you noticed that you can't recognize the
constellations lying back like this. I can't see one. Where is the
north, even?'

She laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things.
She refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations, as
of the wayside plants. 'Why should I want to label them?' she would say.
'I prefer to look at them, not to hide them under a name.' So she
laughed when he asked her to find Vega or Arcturus.

'How full the sky is!' Siegmund dreamed on--'like a crowded street. Down
here it is vastly lonely in comparison. We've found a place far quieter