Soon she had struggled to a certain hill-top, and saw far before her
the silent inflooding of the day. Out of the East it welled and
whitened; the darkness trembled into light; and the stars were
extinguished like the street-lamps of a human city. The whiteness
brightened into silver, the silver warmed into gold, the gold
kindled into pure and living fire; and the face of the East was
barred with elemental scarlet. The day drew its first long breath,
steady and chill; and for leagues around the woods sighed and
shivered. And then, at one bound, the sun had floated up; and her
startled eyes received day's first arrow, and quailed under the
buffet. On every side, the shadows leaped from their ambush and
fell prone. The day was come, plain and garish; and up the steep
and solitary eastern heaven, the sun, victorious over his
competitors, continued slowly and royally to mount.
Seraphina drooped for a little, leaning on a pine, the shrill joy of
the woodlands mocking her. The shelter of the night, the thrilling
and joyous changes of the dawn, were over; and now, in the hot eye
of the day, she turned uneasily and looked sighingly about her.
Some way off among the lower woods, a pillar of smoke was mounting
and melting in the gold and blue. There, surely enough, were human
folk, the hearth-surrounders. Man's fingers had laid the twigs; it
was man's breath that had quickened and encouraged the baby flames;
and now, as the fire caught, it would be playing ruddily on the face
of its creator.
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