Athalie

* * * * *

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.