did a more splendid couple stand up together; they seem to be made for each other. Presently I leave my seat and go out into the corridor, which is bright as noonday in the clear, pale beams of the September moon.
The hall door stands widely, invitingly open. Beyond its lintel lies the broad, sleeping, moon-washed earth, and from down below the faint call of a night-bird rises now and again. For a moment I hesitate—over that threshold I am forbidden to go; then, as the tread of many feet comes down the corridor, I snatch up one of the wraps lying about, and step forth into the silver peace and beauty of the night. Just outside the door is a dark corner, formed by the projection of the porch, and into this I slip, lest a teacher or Buff should come to the door and discover my unlawful whereabouts.
The flowers are all fast asleep; they look ghostly and weird in the glistening light. I wonder if they will wake up by-and-by, as Hans Andersen's did, and whisper flower secrets and love talk as they trip their dainty measures? Somehow I never can believe that these flowers are but coloured shapes: they seem to me to be so much more worthy of souls and nerves than the ugly, stupid folks that walk about the world. There is not a breath of air abroad; the land is as still and unruffled as the dark blue vault overhead, in which the stars glitter countless and brilliant as though a royal hand had strown them. We think queer thoughts sometimes, when we stand perfectly alone and in utter silence, face to face with the great mystery of nature: the common, prosaic, everyday life falls from us, habit fades away, and custom is not; the thousand ways and words and thoughts that lay as a screen between us and her great truths, vanish like thin air; the mortal coil does not press so heavily upon us at these times as at others, and some dim perception of the universal law that governs God's earth breathes itself imperceptibly into our souls.
