THE LONELIER HOURS 23 



longer, this white light is often replaced in fine summers by 

 deeper glows still joining the sunset and dawn. Night 

 becomes stiller and more solemn than at midsummer, but 

 hardly darker ; and it is often fuller of colour. A glow of 

 rich orange or living cornfield gold illuminates the northern 

 sky and defies the darkness ; night is filled with the essence 

 of sunshine poured in the July day. The afterglow of 

 sunset is prolonged by exceptional causes, and the nights 

 become a festival of the sun, yet with the sense of repose 

 shed by its absence from the sky. The afterglow is caused 

 by the rays of the descended sun reflected from lofty clouds 

 or invisible vapours above us, but an ordinary afterglow 

 fades about an hour after sunset. The remarkable nocturnal 

 glows which last on almost till dawn may be due to an 

 unusual volume of floating particles in the higher atmosphere, 

 such as the dust-clouds expelled by a volcano or lifted by 

 a tornado from a desert. Sometimes they may share the 

 principle of the mirage, and be the afterglow of tracts to the 

 west transmitted round the earth's curve by refraction, as 

 travellers see the image of towns or ships projected in the 

 air overhead. The product of earth's own atmosphere, 

 these summer glows give a sense of the fullness of summer 

 unlike the alien brightness of moonlight and starlight. 



On cloudy summer nights the earth is lit with its own 

 moons and stars. Elders and wild-rose bushes frame con- 

 stellations of blossom in the dusky hedges, and a little later 

 white heads of clover shine in the pastures like a Milky 

 Way. White campion flowers gleam opaquely pallid on 

 the grassy banks, and privet blossom stars the shadow of 

 the thickets. The motionless lamps of these blossoms 

 are mingled with other moving lights. Glow-worms set 

 their signals at dusk by roads and rivers, and the white 

 ghost swiftmoths of midsummer vibrate in their fantastic 



