Page 41 - Adventures in shadow-land

What Aster was. 37

she as suddenly descended ; and her rising and
her setting were alike accompanied by the same

weird music which had heralded her first coming,
though its notes were fainter than those which had

hailed the rising of the young new moon.
But every time that the moon returned it

seemed to Eva that she grew brighter and larger,
and that she shed more light upon the earth. And
m
as the light grew brighter, pale white flowers
began here and there to bloom, flowers which

drooped and closed their petals as soon as the
moon fell from the sky; flowers which, as Eva

thought; murmured a low song as she passed them,
yet a song-whose words she never could distin­

guish. And at last she noticed that, as the silver
crescent of the moon broadened, the slight form

of Aster seemed to grow and to expand, so that
he was no longer the tiny doll-like figure which

she had taken from the fountain's crest, but more
like a boy of four years old.

Yet this change, although it was singular; was
only a source of pleasure to the child. It gave

her a companion, not merely a plaything, for
until now she had. looked upon Aster in that light,—

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