, and (in houses which the chicken-pox had not yet reached)
people would be dining out. Perhaps, without being too artistic and
diseased, one who has sometimes liked crowds may sometimes like to
escape them. Dusk and sweet scents, silence and solitude--the London
garden has pleasant gifts for folks who are temporarily tired of things.

Across the lighted squares or mirrored windows on the lawn, slow yet
alert, crept a cat with a heart full of sinful purposes. It flickered
over the wall, poised clear against the sky for one moment, on its way
to blood and passion in some valerian-scented hell. The nocturnal cat is
supposed to be comic, but (in spite of many opportunities) I have never
managed to see the joke. There is something terrific in those lower
animals--there are several of them--that in certain moments produces the
sound of the human voice. Strange too is that electric repugnance that a
cat may set up. Unseen and unheard, her presence is yet felt and
loathed. She is a creature of the night, mysterious and satanic. Watch
her as she starts for the black sabbath--a voluptuous sprawl with claws
extended, steps of tense and measured stealth, and then a mad scurry.
Presently, you shall hear her cry like a woman, even as the wounded hare
sobs out her sisterhood. To-night it was as though for a few moments a
taint of monstrousness had passed through the peace of the garden.

Through an open window not far away came the sound of music--somebody
was playing the piano. Music heard from another house is supposed to be
a torture, and so (like the cat) has its place among the accepted jokes.
But, because to-night I was to have the luck--who invented
chicken-pox?--it was not distressing and funny. It was fine music played
by an artist on a good instrument. It had the quality of the night,
wistful and desiderious. Long ago and in a far country there was a king
who suffered from a restless melancholy, or a bad temper, or something
of that kind, and somebody made music for him. "So Saul was refreshed,
and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him." Surely, that
nocturne was meant to be heard as I heard it--in a garden at night.
Alas, these concerts, with their awful too-muchness, and professional
smirks, and roars of ugly applause! I do not like to have music thus
administered. But for the music that visited my garden that night I had
the most grateful welcome.

When the chance things are charming they far surpass the calcu