world
seemed to lie under the spell of an enchantment. Everything was
sparkling and glittering in pure silver. The trunks of the
birch-trees, the slumbering leaves were overlaid with silver.
The grass, which from her height seemed to lie under delicate
veils, was set with a thousand pale pearls. All things near and
far, the silent distances, were shrouded in this soft, bluish
sheen.

"This must be the night," Maya whispered and folded her hands.

High up in the heavens, partly veiled by the leaves of a
beech-tree, hung a full clear disk of silver, from which the
radiance poured down that beautified the world. And then Maya
saw countless bright, sharp little lights surrounding the moon
in the heavens--oh, so still and beautiful, unlike any shining
things she had ever seen before. To think she beheld the night,
the moon, and the stars--the wonders, the lovely wonders of the
night! She had heard of them but never believed in them. It was
almost too much.

Then the sound rose again, the strange night sound that must
have awakened her. It came from nearby, filling the welkin,
a soaring chirp with a silvery ring that matched the silver on
the trees and leaves and grass and seemed to come rilling down
from the moon on the beams of silver light.

Maya looked about for the source, in vain; in the mysterious
drift of light and shadow it was difficult to make out objects
in clear outline, everything was draped so mysteriously; and yet
everything showed up true and in such heroic beauty.

Her room could keep her no longer; out she had to fly into this
new splendor, the night splendor.

"The good Lord will take care of me," she thought, "I am not
bent upon wrong."

As she was about to fly off through the silver light to her
favorite meadow, now lying full under the moon, she saw a winged
creature alight on a beech-tree leaf not far away. Scarcely
alighted, it raised its head to the moon, lifted its narrow
wings, and drew the edge of one against the other, for all the
world as though it were playing on a violin. And sure enough,
the sound came, the silvery chirp that filled the whole moonlit
world with melody.

"Exquisite," whispered Maya, "heavenly, heavenly, heavenly."

She flew over to the leaf. The night was so mild and warm that
she did not notice it was cooler than by day. When she touched
the leaf, the chirper broke off playing abruptly, and to Maya it
seemed as if there had never been such a stillness before, s