Page:Frank Owen - The Wind That Tramps the World (1929).djvu/93

 well for on the fragrant air was the suggestion of sweet singing, as though some lovely lady were crooning love melodies to the moon. Now the blue trees commenced to stir. They exhaled a sweet fragrance, fragrance of pine and fir, of myrrh and sandalwood. Onward they walked. In the houses the lamps still burned. They glowed gorgeously through the blue maze.

Hwei-Ti sighed. Vision had been granted him at last. All that he had beheld in his entire life dwarfed to naught by comparison to this. At last they came to a house lovelier than all others. It was by no means a mansion, merely a tiny homelike dwelling with countless flowers growing all about it. Before the door of the house sat a beautiful maiden. She was simply dressed in a soft blue costume. Her hair was blueblack. It shone with an exotic sheen in the lantern light that streamed through the window. Her lips were red, made more vivid and startling by the fact that they were the sole bit of color other than blue in the garden. When she smiled, her teeth gleamed white as alabaster.

As Hwei-Ti gazed into her wondrous young face he was thrilled. She was lovelier than any woman his wildest dreams had pictured. She was exquisite. She was divine. It had been the echo of her singing which had given music to the air. It was she who had been crooning to the moon. He stepped forward, and bowed toward the ground. Before such beauty he was speechless. All that he desired was to worship before her. He