Page:Tales of Today.djvu/178

162 of a city where, when I felt like it, I might have the resource of society, for which I felt at times an inclination. My servants all had quarters in a remote building at the bottom of the kitchen-garden, which was surrounded by a high wall. The silence of my dwelling that was lost, hidden, drowned beneath the leaves of the great trees, wrapped in the obscurity of the night, was so restful and so grateful to me that every night I would put off going to bed for several hours in order that I might have the longer time to enjoy it.

There had been a performance of Sigurd at the opera house in the city that evening. It was the first time that I had heard that fine and imaginative drama and it had afforded me keen delight.

I was returning on foot at a lively pace, and sounding phrases were ringing in my ears and graceful visions were floating before my eyes. It was dark, very dark, so dark that I could scarcely distinguish the road before me, and several times I was near tumbling into the ditch. From the octroi at the gate to my house it is about a half-mile, perhaps a little more, say twenty minutes of easy walking. It was one o'clock in the morning, one o'clock or half-past one; the sky brightened a little ahead of me and the crescent appeared—the cheerless crescent of the moon's last quarter. The crescent of the first quarter, that which rises at four or five o'clock in the afternoon, is bright, cheerful, touched with silver, but that which rises after midnight is red, sullen, disheartening; it is the veritable crescent of the Sabbat. Every night-walker must have remarked this. The former, even if it is no thicker than a thread, casts a joyous little light that makes glad the heart and projects clearly drawn