104 AN ISLAND GARDEN 



the bleached white ledges, blushing fair to see, 

 and the ocean beyond shimmers and sparkles 

 beneath the touch of the warm south wind. 



Enchanting days, and evenings still more so, if 

 that were possible! With the music still thrill- 

 ing within the lighted room where the flowers 

 glow under the lamplight, while floods of moon- 

 light make more mystic the charmed night with- 

 out. The thick curtain of the green vine that 

 drapes the piazza is hung over its whole surface 

 with the long drooping clusters of its starry flow- 

 ers that lose all their sweetness upon the air, 

 and show from the garden beneath like an im- 

 mense airy veil of delicate white lace in the moon- 

 light, a wonderful white glory. Through the 

 windows cut in this living curtain of leaves and 

 flowers we look out over the sea beneath the 

 moon is anything more mysteriously beautiful ? 

 on glimmering waves and shadowy sails and 

 rocks dim in broken light and shade ; on the 

 garden with all its flowers so full of color that 

 even in the moonlight their hues are visibly glow- 

 ing. The fair creatures stand still, unstirred by 

 any wandering airs, the Lilies gleam, and the 

 white stars of the Nicotiana, the white Poppies, 

 the white Asters that just begin to bloom, and 

 the tall milky clusters of the Phlox : nothing dis- 

 turbs their slumber save perhaps the wheeling of 

 the rosy-winged Sphinx moth that flutters like 

 the spirit of the night above them as they dream. 



