With it the stars, above the dim vagaries of the bat, were brightly interwoven.

For the present he had only to lie ready, and wait, a single comrade in a happy army.
Through a dark little door came Miss Drake, all in white, and moving quietly, like a symbolic figure of evening, or the genius of the place.
Her hair shone duskily as she bent beside the candle, and with steady fingers tilted a vial, from which amber drops fell slowly into a glass.
With dark eyes watching closely, she had the air of a young, beneficent Medea, intent on some white magic.
"Aren't you coming," called Heywood, "to sit with us awhile ?" "Can't, thanks," she replied, without looking up.

"I'm too busy." "That's no excuse.

Rest a little." She moved away, carrying her medicines, but paused in the door, smiled back at him as from a crypt, and said:-- "Have _you_ been hurt ?" "Only my feelings." "I've no time," she laughed, "for lazy able-bodied persons." And she was gone in the darkness, to sit by her wounded men.
With her went the interval of peace; for past the well-curb came another figure, scuffing slowly toward the light.

The compradore, his robes lost in their background, appeared as an oily face and a hand beckoning with downward sweep.