Outside, the air filled with cricket noise, as the sun reddened in its descent.

The sun had set, but a faint pastel haze lingered in the mid-summer sky.

The pale stars were sliding into their places. The whispering of the leaves was almost hushed. All about them it was still and shadowy and sweet. It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater—a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in.

Twilight fell: The sky turned to a light, dusky purple littered with tiny silver stars.

The afternoon slipped away while we talked -- she talked brightly when any subject came up that interested her -- and it was the last hour of day -- that grave, still hour when the movement of life seems to droop and falter for a few precious minutes -- that brought us the thing I had dreaded silently since my first night in the house.

They rolled up the path, tree branches raking the windshield like angry wardens.