Page:The House Without Windows.djvu/151

 At sunset she was again at the peak of her mountain The sky flushed with magic; a great cloud in the west becamea brilliantly fringed with gold and red-gold, the east was all submerged in a lilac sea, and a delicate laciness of pink trailed across the zenith. Sunset fairies alighted on the snow-peaks they were fiery for a moment, and all the great snow-fields were flaming. Then the colour faded to pink on the summits. But in the sky Nature still flung about her colours wildlyfire was in the zenith, the long bank of clouds was vividly fringed with red-gold, and there to the south it changed to caverns of shadowed pink and strange violet. Seas and bays and cloud islands formed out of itseas of a strange greenish rose. Then one thrill and flame of gold spread about the whole earth; the snow at her feet was shadowy gold, and a pathway of it danced upon the air 'way to the horizon. It played upon each frost-feather; the eastern mountains were flushed with this soft gold.

And then, dizzy with the colour and the beauty, Eepersip fell asleep, her fingers clutching the rosy snow.

The next morning the frost-feathers had almost disappeared underneath a new snowfall. The air