t
blessing on their married life together. Yes, he would like to tell
him.

The clocks struck five--he heard their voices echo through the house;
and, at the last, the tiny voice of the cuckoo clock sounded and the
little wild flap of his wings came quite clearly through the silence;
his voice was answered by a chorus from the garden, the voices of the
birds seemed to grow ever louder and louder; in that strange dark room,
with its shaded lights and heavy airs, it was clear and fresh like the
falling of water on cold, shining stone.

Harry went softly to the window and drew back a corner of the blind.
The dawn was gradually revealing the forms and colours of the garden,
and in the grey, misty light things were mysterious and uncertain; like
white lights in a dusky room the two white statues shone through the
mist. At that strange hour they seemed in their right atmosphere; they
seemed to move and turn and bend--he could have fancied that they
sailed on the mist--that, for a moment, they had vanished and then that
they had grown enormous, monstrous. He watched them eagerly, and as
the light grew clearer he made them out more plainly--the straight,
eager beauty of the man, the dim, mysterious grace of the woman.
Perhaps they talked in those early hours when they were alone in the
garden; perhaps they might speak to him if he were to join them then.
Then he fancied that the mist formed into figures of men and women; to
his excited fancy the garden seemed peopled with shapes that increased
and dwindled and vanished. Round the statues many shapes gathered; one
in especial seemed to walk to and fro with its face turned to the
house. It was a woman--her grey dress floated in the air, and he saw
her form outlined against the statue. Then the mist seemed to sweep
down again and catch the statues in its eddies and hide them from his
gaze. The dawn was breaking very slowly. From the window the sweep of
the sea was, in daylight, perfectly visible: now in the dim grey of the
sky it was hidden--but Harry knew where it must be and watched for its
appearance. The first lights were creeping over the sky, breaking in
delicate tints and ripples of silver and curving, arc-shaped, from the
west to the east.

Where sky and sea divided a faint pale line of grey hovered and broke,
turning into other paler lights of the most delicate blue. The dawn
had come.

He turned back again to the garden and started with surprise: in the
m