The moon was shining outside against the blind with an amazing white brilliance, and as he undressed he went across to the open window and let the flood of cool light shine in. It made the yellow flame of his bedroom candle look insufferably vulgar and tawdry, and blowing it out he again crossed to the window and sat there while the stirring of some fragrant breeze sent its soft ripples against his skin. As Lady Sunningdale had said, he was a gourmet in sensations, and the exquisiteness of the sleeping summer night, peopled with ivory lights and ebony shadows, and the great velvet vault of the sky pricked by the thin, remote fires of innumerable stars and lit by that glorious sexless flame of the moon smote him with a sudden pang of pleasure. Somehow all this must be translatable into music, the stars scattered over the sky were likely staccato notes of strings across the great tune of the moonshine; it was the first slow movement in the great symphony of night and day. At sunrise the scherzo would laugh and dance down the breeze of morning with a thousand quivering leaves and a million nodding flowers, trees waving, birds among the branches. Noonday would combine all the powers of light and air into a third movement of intolerable splendour.... He got up from where he sat, and stretched his arms wide, as if to embrace it all. Then half-laughing at himself, he dived into his nightshirt, leaving the rest of his clothes in a heap on the floor, and, as his custom always was, laid his face on his hand and fell asleep. It was still early when he woke, but the sun was up, and even as he had anticipated before he went to sleep, the slow movement of the moon had given place to a dancing, rapturous scherzo. A breeze stirred with a short sweeping rhythm among the trees, birds chirped in the leafy temples, and the sparkle of the early sunlight gave an inimitable briskness to the young day. Then with a sudden ebb in the full tide of his joy of life came the thought that it was Sunday, a day in that house neither of rest or gladness in his view, but one much taken up with lengthy unmusical services, in which there was a great deal of singing, with intervals in which no amusement could be indulged in. He walked from his window back to his bed and looked at his watch. It was still not yet seven, but the “land of counterpane” was no longer desirable or even possible, and putting on coat and trousers he went quietly downstairs and out across the lawn into the fields beyond, where a bathing-place had been scooped out of the river-bed. Till breakfast, at any rate,--still two hours away,--he need put no restraint on the flood of vitality and joy that ran this morning in spate through him and this beautiful world. There were two hours of it, with the cool shock of the racing water, the caress of the warm wind, the sense of being alone, and young, and out-of-doors. Pagan it might be, but irresistibly delightful.