Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/332

300 the wind and a tassel to swing about so gracefully? No, they have got there somehow, because the street wanted it—that is all.

The sun has thrown a red glow on to the window pane. The tassel is almost still. It is evening now, and all the pretty ladies have gone home. Their afternoon lounge is over. The shops are putting up great shutters, and all the street is growing black and dark.

Look at the little window. The yellow blind is down and a light behind gives to it a soft, warm colour. In the centre is a black shadow which we can recognise to be the shape of the back of a small looking-glass. But we do not think of the looking-glass. We only see a bright yellow ground with a queerly shaped black shadow in the centre, and on each side of it a dark wing formed by the shape of the muslin curtains. The little fuzzy plant is gone. The rest of the street has lost the aspect that it wore this afternoon, but the little window is still beautiful.

And now it is a hot summer night and the stars are out, and lovers are walking in couples along the dusty street, and there is stillness in the air. It has been so hot all day. The sun blazed down upon the white pavement and the people crawled lazily along the streets. The window was wide open all day, but the tassel hung straight down like a rod and never moved, and the little fuzzy plant became quite brown and shrivelled as the burning rays beat down upon it.

Now it is dark, and still there is something beautiful in the window—a white patch up in the corner of the pane—the reflection of a large brilliant star. And underneath, the lazy shuffling of the