* * * * *
They had been slowly pacing the garden paths, arm within arm, when
Mrs. Connor came to summon them to dinner. The small dining-room was
flooded with sunset light; rosy bars of it lay across cloth and fruit
and flowers, and striped the wall and ceiling.
And when dinner was ended the pale fire still burned on the thin silk
curtains and struck across the garden, gilding the coping of the wall
where clustering peaches hung all turned to gold like fabled fruit
that ripens in Hesperides.
Hafiz followed them out under the evening sky and seated himself upon
the grass. And he seemed mildly to enjoy the robins' evening
carolling, blinking benevolently up at the little vesper choristers,
high singing in the sunset's lingering glow.
Whenever light puffs of wind set blossoms swaying, the jet from the
fountain basin swerved, and a mellow raining sound of drops swept the
still pool. The lilac twilight deepened to mauve; upon the surface of
the pool a primrose tint grew duller. Then the first bat zig-zagged
across the sky; and every clove-pink border became misty with the
wings of dusk-moths.
On Athalie's frail white gown one alighted,--a little grey thing
wearing a pair of peacock-tinted diamonds on its forewings; and as it
sat there, quivering, the iridescent incrustations changed from
burnished gold to green.
"Wonders, wonders, under the moon," murmured the girl--"thronging
miracles that fill the day and night, always, everywhere. And so few
to see them.... Sometimes, to me the blindness of the world to all the
loveliness that I 'see clearly' is like my own blindness to the hidden
wonders of the night--where uncounted myriads of little rainbow
spirits fly. And nobody sees and knows the living splendour of them
except when some grey-winged phantom strays indoors from the outer
shadows. And it astonishes us to see, under the drab forewings, a
blaze of scarlet, gold, or orange."
"I suppose," he said, "that the unseen night world all around us is no
more wonderful than what, in the day-world, the vast majority of us
never see, never suspect."
"I think it must be so, Clive. Being accustomed to a more densely
populated world than are many people, I believe that if I could see
only what they see,--merely that small portion of activity and life
which the world calls 'living things,' I should find the sunlit world
rather empty, and the night but a silent desolation under the stars."
After a few minutes' thought he asked in a low voice whether at that
moment there was anybody in the garden except themselves.