Page 262 - swanns-way

were thickly wooded, the heavy shade of the trees gave the
water a background which was ordinarily dark green, al-
though sometimes, when we were coming home on a calm
evening after a stormy afternoon, I have seen in its depths a
clear, crude blue that was almost violet, suggesting a floor of
Japanese cloisonné. Here and there, on the surface, floated,
blushing like a strawberry, the scarlet heart of a lily set in a
ring of white petals.
Beyond these the flowers were more frequent, but paler,
less glossy, more thickly seeded, more tightly folded, and
disposed, by accident, in festoons so graceful that I would
fancy I saw floating upon the stream, as though after the
dreary stripping of the decorations used in some Watteau
festival, moss-roses in loosened garlands. Elsewhere a cor-
ner seemed to be reserved for the commoner kinds of lily;
of a neat pink or white like rocket-flowers, washed clean
like porcelain, with housewifely care; while, a little far-
ther again, were others, pressed close together in a floating
garden-bed, as though pansies had flown out of a garden
like butterflies and were hovering with blue and burnished
wings over the transparent shadowiness of this watery bor-
der; this skiey border also, for it set beneath the flowers a
soil of a colour more precious, more moving than their own;
and both in the afternoon, when it sparkled beneath the lil-
ies in the kaleidoscope of a happiness silent, restless, and
alert, and towards evening, when it was filled like a distant
heaven with the roseate dreams of the setting sun, inces-
santly changing and ever remaining in harmony, about the
more permanent colour of the flowers themselves, with the

262 Swann’s Way