While they talked he had been watching the clouds.
"Do go, Hester," he said. "I give you my word it will be a fine
evening."
She went to put on her hat and cloak, and presently they were in the
street.
It was one of those misty clearings in which sometimes the day seems to
gather up his careless skirts, that have been sweeping the patient,
half-drowned world, as he draws nigh the threshold of the waiting night.
There was a great lump of orange color half melted up in the watery
clouds of the west, but all was dreary and scarce consolable, up to the
clear spaces above, stung with the steely stars that began to peep out
of the blue hope of heaven. Thither Hester kept casting up her eyes as
they walked, or rather somehow her eyes kept travelling thitherward of
themselves, as if indeed they had to do with things up there. And the
child that cries for the moon is wiser than the man who looks upon the
heavens as a mere accident of the earth, with which none but
_unpractical_ men concern themselves.
But as she walked gazing at "an azure disc, shield of tranquility," over
her head, she set her foot down unevenly, and gave her ankle a wrench.
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