curtain.
II

Then what happens to the moon? She, who, shy and veiled, slips out
before dusk to take the air of heaven, wandering timidly among the
columned clouds, and fugitive from the staring of the sun; she, who, when
dusk has come, rules the sentient night with such chaste and icy
spell--whither and how does she retreat?

I came on her one morning--I surprised her. She was stealing into a dark
wintry wood, and five little stars were chasing her. She was
orange-hooded, a light-o'-love dismissed--unashamed and unfatigued,
having taken--all. And she was looking back with her almond eyes, across
her dark-ivory shoulder, at Night where he still lay drowned in the sleep
she had brought him. What a strange, slow, mocking look! So might
Aphrodite herself have looked back at some weary lover, remembering the
fire of his first embrace. Insatiate, smiling creature, slipping down to
the rim of the world to her bath in the sweet waters of dawn, whence
emerging, pure as a water lily, she would float in the cool sky till
evening came again! And just then she saw me looking, and hid behind a
holm-oak tree; but I could still see the gleam of one shoulder and her
long narrow eyes pursuing me. I went up to the tree and parted its dark
boughs to take her; but she had slipped behind another. I called to her
to stand, if only for one moment. But she smiled and went slip ping on,
and I ran thrusting through the wet bushes, leaping the fallen trunks.
The scent of rotting leaves disturbed by my feet leaped out into the
darkness, and birds, surprised, fluttered away. And still I ran--she
slipping ever further into the grove, and ever looking back at me. And I
thought: But I will catch you yet, you nymph of perdition! The wood will
soon be passed, you will have no cover then! And from her eyes, and the