The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Glimpses of the Moon, by Edith Wharton

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Title: The Glimpses of the Moon

Author: Edith Wharton

Posting Date: September 15, 2008 [EBook #1263]
Release Date: April, 1998

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON ***

Produced by Dean Gilley

THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON

By Edith Wharton

PART I

I

IT rose for them--their honey-moon--over the waters of a lake so famed
as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not
having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own.

"It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours,
to risk the experiment," Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the
inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its
magic carpet across the waters to their feet.

"Yes--or the loan of Strefford's villa," her husband emended, glancing
upward through the branches at a long low patch of paleness to which the
moonlight was beginning to give the form of a white house-front.

"Oh, come when we'd five to choose from. At least if you count the
Chicago flat."

"So we had--you wonder!" He laid his hand on hers, and his touch renewed
the sense of marvelling exultation which the deliberate survey of their
adventure always roused in her.... It was characteristic that she merely
added, in her steady laughing tone: "Or, not counting the flat--for
I hate to brag--just consider the others: Violet Melrose's place at
Versailles, your aunt's villa at Monte Carlo--and a moor!"

She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet with
a somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he shouldn't
accuse her of slurring it over. But he seemed to have no desire to
do so. "Poor old Fred!" he merely remarked; and she breathed out
carelessly: "Oh, well--"

His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they stood
silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was aware only of
the warm current running from palm to palm, as the moonlight below them
drew its line of magic from shore to shore.

Nick Lansing spoke at last. "Versaill