The trees cast still shadows
like intricate black lace upon the wall.
The garden in the moonlight was very different from the garden
by day; moonshine was tangled in the hedges and stretched in
phantom cobwebs from spray to spray. Every flower was gleaming
white or crimson black, and the air was aquiver with the thridding
of small crickets and nightingales singing unseen in the depths of
the trees.
There was no darkness in the world, but only warm, mysterious
shadows; and all the leaves and spikes were edged and lined with
iridescent jewels of dew. The night was warmer than any night had
ever been, the heavens by some miracle at once vaster and nearer,
and spite of the great ivory-tinted moon that ruled the world, the
sky was full of stars.
The little man did not shout nor sing for all his infinite
gladness. He stood for a time like one awe-stricken, and then,
with a queer small cry and holding out his arms, he ran out as if
he would embrace at once the whole warm round immensity of the
world. He did not follow the neat set paths that cut the garden
squarely, but thrust across the beds and through the wet, tall,
scented herbs, through the night stock and the nicotine and the
clusters of phantom white mallow flowers and through the thickets
of southern-wood and lavender, and knee-deep across a wide space of
mignonette.
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