brighten and spread her cool, clean light over the garden, till the leaves glistened, the blue and purple blossoms showed sharp and clear, the red and yellow blooms glowed, the white flowers gleamed, each of the throng of statues stood nimbused in a shimmer of radiance, the bronze statues gilded in their aureoles, the marble statues glittering pearly through silver haloes, while myriads of dew-drops sparkled like facetted gems, and the jets of the fountains turned to streams of falling diamonds. The balustrades of the terraces seemed onyx and jasper, the white walls of the villa showed iridescent and opaline, its red-tile roofs, glazed with the night moisture, flamed like coral against the intense sapphire sky. The doves that fluttered about their ridges and eaves and the peacocks that stirred numbly on the terraces blazed like jewels. The peace, the security, the opulence, the ostentation of his surroundings dazzled Dexibios, stunned him, made him feel small and worthless and impotent. He was abased before the beauty of it all and yet he reveled in it.
Then suddenly, he forgot everything, forgot sleeplessness and anxiety and his own insignificance and the beauty about him.
For Thessa came!
From between the flaring crimson of the two great mallowbushes, laden with deep red flowers,
