Violins played softly, somewhere out of
sight, and everywhere on the night air was the breath of myriads of
roses. Handsomely dressed people passed in and out of the house, and
across the lawn. The light, the music, and the perfume made the place
seem enchanted ground to the bewildered little John Jay, and when he
reached the illuminated fountain just in front of the house, he clung to
Mammy's skirts as if he had suddenly found himself in some strange Eden,
and was frightened by its unearthly beauty.
The fountain into which, only that morning, he had thrust his hot little
face for a drink, now seemed bewitched. It was no longer a flow of
sparkling water, but of splashing rainbows. From palest green to ruby
red, from amethyst to amber it paled and deepened and glowed.
All the evening he moved about like one in a dream. The tableaux with
their shifting scenes of knights and ladies and marble statuary were
burned on his memory as heavenly visions. He knew nothing of the tinsel
and flour and red lights which produced the effect.
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