SON OF THE WIND
and all across the wall, lay marvelous tracery of black and silver, a perfect mimic—lacking only color—of the trees outside. He was standing in the enchanted semblance of a wood. He remembered that for the eight past days this brocading had been gray. He drew a curtain aside. The fan of cloud, that coquetry of the moon, was furled and gone; the sky stood deep and clear above the pines. The moon's self was not high enough yet to be visible, since to be visible from where he stood she must reach nearly mid-heaven, but her radiance was upon everything.
The circle of tall trees solemnly surrounding the clearing made a wreath of shadows like velvet, and all that was not shadow was drenched in clear white fire. Between the clouded and the clear moonlight there was such difference as between beauty clothed and beauty unveiled. The sight of this brought him thoughts, strange and beautiful past the telling. He let the curtain fall, and turned back. The hour was scant eleven o'clock, but the house was still. He was not tired, not sleepy. He was preternaturally wide-awake. There seemed to be an owl on the edge of the clearing, complaining in its deep chest voice. The body of a bat struck his window-screen. The creatures all came out with
270
