"WHAT THE MOON SAW"

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 114, 16 May 1931, Page 18

"WHAT THE MOON SAW"

The great silver moon, which looked almost golden in the dark violet sky, shone down upon a garden of tangled creepers, rioting over stone walls and terraces, and on tall trees rising up majestically in the mopnlight, changing both into a fairyland of black and silver.

But all was not tangled foliage, for in an open space where the silvery light lay, a mass of moonflowers hung from the wall above, their long pointed buds quivering in the night breeze; and underneath them upon a stone bench crouched a small white figure, her elfin face upturned towards the mass of white moonflowers. It was a delicate little face, upon which the silver-gold moonlight fell, a little face crowned in a wealth of long nightblack curls, but so elf-like that it seemed impossible she could belong to people of real flesh and Wood. As she gazed at the drooping white flovvcrs and at the great silver moon above her, she kept singing softly to herself; and as she crooned her song, she watched with, dart eager eyes the

buds of the moonflower, and gradually, one by one, they softly stirred and opened, filling the night air with their sweet scent. The child watched breathlessly, counting in an eager little voice the buds aa they slowly unfolded, until she lost count, and then she softly clapped her hands, jumped up from her crouching position, and stood for a moment poised as if in flight, then 'quickly shot away into the dense shadows. In and out of the tangled paths she darted, a ghostlike figure in the silver moonlight, till- suddenly her slim white form was hidden from sight by one of the tall majestic trees. ' For a while the moon still lingered, sending silver arrows of light to penetrate the velvet darkness, hoping to see that elf-like figure once more. But aa she did not reappear again, the moon sadly sailed on, leaving that, tangled mass of creepers and trees in blackness once again. "LYDIA OF THE PINES" (15). Kelburn,