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He had in his mother an example of the mind accessible only to concrete impressions: the mind which could die for the particular instance, yet remain serenely indifferent to its causes. To Mrs. Amherst, her son's work had been interesting simply because it was his work: remove his presence from Westmore, and the whole industrial problem became to her as non-existent as star-dust to the naked eye.
But how with that great universe of millions of stars in which our solar system is only a speck of star-dust, a speck which a traveller through the wilds of space might pass a hundred times without notice? We have learned much about this universe, though our knowledge of it is still dim.
And then, as the gray cloud swept back behind them, beyond the city, and the stars gleamed overhead, they saw again that great trail of star-dust which the Chemist first had seen through his microscope, hanging in an ever broadening arc across the sky, and ending vaguely at their feet.
It was Una Una who saw it first: the tiny speck of star-dust drifting down, down among the woolly clouds dark as if the night had been shorn and its fleece hung out to dry alighting here and there, the little firefly, in other words the atomy electric battery attached to the precious record, trying so hard, with the parachute's aid, to find its way back to earth from the lonely height it had reached.
What was it to the moon and all those shining swarms of stars, and that far star-dust in the Milky Way, whether he, Jerome Edwards, had shoes to close or not? Whether he and his mother starved or not, they would shine just the same. The triviality even ludicrousness of the sorrow of man, as compared with eternal things, was over the boy.
A dense black pall of cloud had swept like a heavy curtain over the stars, to the tune of flash and bang. Now, all was clear and calm again; the white star-dust of the Milky Way powdered the sky just overhead; and though the heat was still intense, the air had a fragrant smell of saturated dust and rain-soaked earth he could hear streamlets of water trickling down the hillside to the river below.
And the tender sapling was rooted in the hope that long before it was a mature tree that comet-like Wayfarer would start, the Thunder Bird would fly. Well! star-dust never blinded the eyes.
Now we'll all go in together, he said in a deep voice, 'and gather star-dust for our dreams... He groped to find them. His hands grew shadowy. He felt the empty air. His voice died away even as he said it, and the difficulty he had in seeing seemed to affect their own eyes as well. A mist rose. It turned to darkness. The river of starlight faded. The net had suddenly big holes in it.
On our first emergence from the brilliantly-lighted cabin the night appeared to be dark; but as our eyes accommodated themselves to the change of conditions, it became apparent that the cloudless sky was thickly gemmed and powdered with stars of all magnitudes, from those of the first order down to the star-dust constituting the broad belt of the Milky Way, all gleaming with that soft, resplendent lustre that is only to be witnessed within the zone of the tropics.
After the sound of her voice had died out in a stifled sigh they appeared to listen yet; and nothing stirred among the shapeless shadows but the innumerable fireflies that twinkled in changing clusters, in gliding pairs, in wandering and solitary points like the glimmering drift of scattered star-dust. Willems turned round slowly, reluctantly, as if compelled by main force.
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