Warwick Deeping

Night was in the sky, night in her winter austerity — keen, clear, aglitter with stars as though her robe were spangled with cosmic frost.

She lay still awhile, and let her thoughts dance like the motes in the shimmer of sunlight that stole in between the branches.

Her grace, her infinite tenderness, the purity of her, were all set about his soul like angels round a dreamer's bed.

The black moth night had come into the sky with his golden-spotted wings all spread.

She climbed out, and stood like a water nymph, her body agleam and asparkle with its dew, her skin like rare silk, smooth as a star's glance. Down fell her hair like smoke. She stretched her arms to the moon, and laughed, aglow with the …

He thanked God in his heart that he had plucked her blemishless from gradual death. It was even thus, he thought, that a good soldier should ride into Paradise bearing the soul of the woman he loved.

He had reverted...to the little barbarisms of the struggling 'thirties, when he had scuffled with life in his shirt-sleeves.

Men can love a tree, a cottage, a stream; Flavian loved Avalon as being the temple of the unutterable memories of the past.