and between the trees came glimpses of its marble white where the faint
grey light touched it from the east.

Moving slowly--vigilant, alert, with eyes turning always to right and to
left, with ears which felt the intense silence more acutely than they
could have felt any tumult--the thief reached the low wall of the
garden, at the western side. The last redness of the sunset's reflection
had lighted all the many windows, and the vast place blazed at him for
an instant before the light dipped behind the black bar of the trees,
and left him face to face with a pale house, whose windows now were
black and hollow, and seemed like eyes that watched him. Every window
was closed; the lower ones were guarded by jalousies; through the glass
of the ones above he could see the set painted faces of the shutters.

From far off he had heard, and known, the plash-plash of fountains, and
now he saw their white changing columns rise and fall against the
background of the terrace. The garden was full of rose bushes trailing
and unpruned; and the heavy, happy scent of the roses, still warm from
the sun, breathed through the place, exaggerating the sadness of its
tangled desolation. Strange figures gleamed in the deepening dusk, but
they were too white to be feared. He crept into a corner where Psyche
drooped in marble, and, behind her pedestal, crouched. He took food from
his pockets and ate and drank. And between the mouthfuls he listened and
watched.

The moon rose, and struck a pale fire from the face of the house and
from the marble limbs of the statues, and the gleaming water of the
fountains drew the moonbeams into the unchanging change of its rise and
fall.

Something rustled and stirred among the roses. The thief grew rigid: his
heart seemed suddenly hollow; he held his breath. Through the deepening
shadows something gleamed white; and not marble, for it moved, it came
towards him. Then the silence of the night was shattered by a scream, as
the white shape glided into the moonlight. The thief resumed his
munching, and another shape glimmered after the first. "Curse the
beasts!" he said, and took another draught from his bottle, as the white
peacocks were blotted out by the shadows of the trees, and the stillness
of the night grew more intense.

In the moonlight the thief went round and about the house, pushing
through the trailing briers that clung to him--and now grown bolder he
looked closely at doors and windows. But all