look rounder than seemed fitting.

They sat for a time as silent as the night that infolded them. They were
not lovers, though they loved each other, perhaps, more than either
knew. They were watching to see the moon rise at the head of the valley
on one of whose high sloping sides they sat.

The moon kept her tryst, and revealed a loveliness beyond what the day
had to show. She looked upon a wide valley, that gleamed with the
windings of a river. She brightened the river, and dimmed in the houses
and cottages the lights with which the opposite hill sparkled like a
celestial map. Lovelily she did her work in the heavens, her poor
mirror-work--all she was fit for now, affording fit room, atmosphere,
and medium to young imaginations, unable yet to spread their wings in
the sunlight, and believe what lies hid in the light of the workaday
world. Nor was what she showed the less true for what lay unshown in
shrouded antagonism. The vulgar cry for the real would bury in deepest
grave every eternal fact. It is the cry, "Not this man, but Barabbas!"
The day would reveal a river stained with loathsome refuse, and rich
gardens on hill-sides mantled in sooty smoke and evil-smelling vapors,
sent up from a valley where men, like gnomes, toiled and caused to toil
too eagerly. What would one think of a housekeeper so intent upon saving
that she could waste no time on beauty or cleanliness? How many who
would storm if they came home to an untidy house, feel no shadow of
uneasiness that they have all day been defiling the house of the Father,
nor at night lifted hand to cleanse it! Such men regard him as a fool,
whose joy a foul river can poison; yet, as soon as they have by
pollution gathered and saved their god, they make haste to depart from
the spot they have ruined! Oh, for an invasion of indignant ghosts, to
drive from the old places the generation that dishonors the ancient