“Let us be grateful for the joys of Theocritus, and for our joys and for the same joy in the same old beauties of those to come,” said Jane, sententiously. “And let us go home, for the moon is rising.”
Large and golden it came out of the rosy east, the west still smouldering with the dying fires of the ended day.
Their way led through the olive orchards, grown argent in the faint light, and taking on fresh fantasies of gnarling, and of ghostly resemblances to twisted, convoluted human forms. Among the misty olives the blooming pear-trees showed like delicate silvery-veiled brides in the paling dark, and with the falling dew arose the poignant incense of ripening lemons, of blossoming weeds, and of earth freshly tilled.
Wandering a little from the faintly traced path, grown invisible in the vagueness of the diffused moon-radiance, they called for help to a young shepherd going lightly homeward, with his cloak draped in long classic folds from one shoulder, and singing under his breath. A shepherd who may have been merely a commonplace, handsome young Sicilian by day, but who in this magic shining dusk was the shepherd of all pastoral verse, strayed for a moment from Arcady. Following his swift light feet they were set at last into the broad road among the herds and the asses and the homing labourers—Demeter’s well-beloved children.
“E’en now the distant farms send up their smoke,
And shadows lengthen from the lofty hills.
—Now the gloaming star
Bids fold the flock and duly tell their tale,
And moves unwelcome up the wistful sky.