limpid as water, with a strength, a violence, a precision exceeding the
music of a hundred thousand tipsy carrillons pealing through the silent
night. And now again the notes were softly weaving their fabric of sound:
bewitchingly quiet, intimately sweet, musingly careful, like the music of
tiny glass bells; and once more they were louder and again they fainted
away, borne on the still wind like the murmur of angels praying.

The blue velvety canopy was stretched on high, studded with twinkling
stars; and all about the country-side the trees stood white. On the
winding paths, among the pinks, anemones, guelder-roses and
jasmine-bushes, walked stately white figures in trailing garments, with
wreaths of white roses and yellow flowers gleaming on their golden
tresses, which they shook out over their white shoulders. All the world
was one pure vista full of blue, curling mist and fresh, untasted
fragrance. A soft melody of dreamy song was wafted through the air. And
Horieneke saw herself also playing in that great garden, an angel among
angels. Ropes hung stretched from tree to tree; and they swung upon them
and rocked with streaming hair and fluttering garments, floating high
above the tree-tops, light as the wind, in a shower of white blossoms.
They sang all together, with those who lay on the beds of white lilies
and violets: a song of unheard sweetness. Not one spoke of leaving off or
going home; they only wished to stay like that, without rain or darkness;
there was a continual happy frolic, a glad gaiety, in those spacious
halls where, in spite of the singing and the music, all things were yet
so deliciously, languidly still, still as the moonlight.

Yonder, by the dark wood, the steady swish of a sickle was heard; and
this made a fearsome noise in the tenuous night. A gigantic man stood
there; his head looked over the trees and his wide-stretched arms swung
the sickle and a pick-hook; and, stroke by stroke, the foliage and the