away in the distance they had served only
to intensify the stillness. He felt that peculiar detachedness that one
senses in thick black dark, as though he and his immediate surroundings
were floating in some soundless, ambient ether. The white bulldog
scurried noiselessly back and forth across the clipped grass, now
emerging like a canine ghost in the light from the doorway, now
suffering total eclipse. Staring into the furry gloom, he seemed, as in
those moments of semi-delirium in the forest, to see Shirley's face
advance and retreat as though it lay on the very pulsing heart of the
darkness.

He stepped down to the graveled drive and followed it to the gate, then,
bareheaded, took the Red Road. Along this highway he had rattled in
Uncle Jefferson's crazy hack--with her red rose in his hand. The musky
scent of the pressed leaves in the book in his pocket seemed to be all
about him.

The odor of living roses, in fact, was in the air. It came on the
scarce-felt breeze, a heavy calling perfume. He walked on, keeping the
road by the misty infiltrating shimmer of the stars, with a sensation
rather of gliding than of walking. Now and then from some pasture came
the snort and whinny of horses or the grunt of a frog from a marshy
sink, and once, where a narrow path joined the road, he felt against his
trousers the sniffing nose of a silent and friendly puppy. It occurred
to him that if, as scientists say, colors emit sound-tones, scents
also should possess a music of their own: the honeysuckle fragrance,
maybe--soft mellow fluting as of diminutive wind-instruments; the
far-faint sickly odor of lilies--the upper register of faery violins;
this spicy breath of roses--blending, throbbing chords like elfin echoes
of an Italian harp. The fancy pleased him; he could imagine the perfume
now in the air carried with it an under-music, like a ghostly harping.

It came to him at the same instant that this was no mere fancy.
Somewhere in the languorous night a harp was being played. He paused and
listened intently, then went on toward the sound. Presently he became
aware that he had passed it, had left it on one side, and he went back,
stumbling along the low stone wall till it opened to a shadowy lane,
full of foliaged whispers. The rose scent had grown stronger; it was
almost, in that heavy air, as if he were breasting an etherial sea of
attar. He felt as if he were treading on a path of rose-leaves, down
which the increasing melod