The effect was so singular and pretty that I had haunted this
road for days for the pleasure of seeing that flower border
made by nature. Now all colour was extinguished: beneath and
around me there was a dimness which at a few yards' distance
deepened to blackness, and above me the pale dim blue sky
sprinkled with stars; but as I walked I had the image of that
brilliant band of yellow colour in my mind.
By and by the late moon rose, and a little later the east
began to grow lighter and the dark down to change
imperceptibly to dim hoary green. Then the exquisite colours
of the dawn once more, and the larks rising in the dim
distance--a beautiful unearthly sound--and so in the end I
came to "The Stones," rejoicing, in spite of a cloud which now
appeared on the eastern horizon to prevent the coming sun from
being seen, that I had the place to myself. The rejoicing
came a little too soon; a very few minutes later other
visitors on foot and on bicycles began to come in, and we all
looked at each other a little blankly. Then a motorcar
arrived, and two gentlemen stepped out and stared at us, and
one suddenly burst out laughing.
"I see nothing to laugh at!" said his companion a little
severely.
The other in a low voice made some apology or explanation
which I failed to catch. It was, of course, not right; it was
indecent to laugh on such an occasion, for we were not of the
ebullient sort who go to "The Stones" at three o'clock in the
morning "for a lark"; but it was very natural in the
circumstances, and mentally I laughed myself at the absurdity
of the situation.
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