Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/333

Rh the lovers feet along the pavement. Surely no living person could have lifted the sash so skilfully that the glass could catch the image of that star?

The heat has passed away. A mild damp wind is sweeping over the street, whirling along the dry leaves from the trees in the little gardens in front of the houses; they rush and crackle as they fly along the pavement. People hurry along, struggling with the wind. They do not loiter at the shop windows. The little window is closed. Occasionally the tassel moves in a spasmodic way, and the white curtains shudder when the wind rushes in through some crevice. So far there is nothing beautiful; but in a moment the light shifts. Look, now there is a thin metallic blue reflection in the pane; and now great masses of white float swiftly across it. Watch them, one after another. How quickly they pass! Who put that window in such a position that it might catch the beauty of these fleeting clouds? Is it to make up for the little fuzzy plant? For that is gone for ever.

A thin yellow fog is over the street, and under foot there is a thick mud from the recent snow; the air is very cold, and a drizzling rain is trickling through the fog upon the few people who are in the street. There is a cold silence about it to-day. Occasionally you may hear the sticky noise made by a cart or carriage making its way through the muddy floor of the street. It is not dark enough to light the gas inside the houses, and so the street looks dead and deserted.

As you look up at the little window, a yellow glimmer springs up behind the water-bespattered pane. The thin yellow fog round the window is scattered into single points of black and pale