; whereupon, glancing nervously from
side to side, lest haply I should see the white woman standing near
a flower-bed or by my couch, I would run at full speed back to the
verandah. Then, and only then, I would lie down with my face to
the garden, and, covering myself over, so far as possible, from the
mosquitos and bats, fall to gazing in front of me as I listened to the
sounds of the night and dreamed of love and happiness.

At such times everything would take on for me a different meaning. The
look of the old birch trees, with the one side of their curling branches
showing bright against the moonlit sky, and the other darkening the
bushes and carriage-drive with their black shadows; the calm, rich
glitter of the pond, ever swelling like a sound; the moonlit sparkle
of the dewdrops on the flowers in front of the verandah; the graceful
shadows of those flowers where they lay thrown upon the grey stonework;
the cry of a quail on the far side of the pond; the voice of some one
walking on the high road; the quiet, scarcely audible scrunching of two
old birch trees against one another; the humming of a mosquito at my car
under the coverlet; the fall of an apple as it caught against a
branch and rustled among the dry leaves; the leapings of frogs as they
approached almost to the verandah-steps and sat with the moon shining
mysteriously on their green backs--all these things took on for me a
strange significance--a significance of exceeding beauty and of infinite
love. Before me would rise SHE, with long black tresses and a high bust,
but always mournful in her fairness, with bare hands and voluptuous
arms. She loved me, and for one moment of her love I would sacrifice
my whole life!--But the moon would go on rising higher and higher, and
shining brighter and brighter, in the heavens; the rich sparkle of the
pond would swell like a sound, and become ever more and more brilliant,
while the shadows would grow blacker and blacker, and the sheen of the
moon more and more transparent: until, as I looked at and listened to
all this, something would say to me that SHE with the bare hands and
voluptuous arms did not represent ALL happiness, that love for her
did not represent ALL good; so that, the more I gazed at the full,
high-riding moon, the higher would true beauty and goodness appear to me
to lie, and the purer and purer they would seem--the nearer and nearer
to Him who is the source of all beauty and all goodness. And tears of