It was midsummer; and the nights were hot. The moon, falling on water, made it white, inscrutable, whether deep or shallow. But where the moonlight fell on solid objects it gave them a burnish¹ and a silver plating, so that even the leaves in country roads seemed varnished². All along the silent country roads leading to London carts plodded⁴; the iron reins⁵ fixed⁶ in the iron hands, for vegetables, fruit, flowers travelled slowly. Heaped high with round crates⁷ of cabbage, cherries, carnations⁸, they looked like caravans⁹ piled with the goods of tribes migrating in search of water, driven by enemies to seek new pasturage. On they plodded, down this road, that road, keeping close to the kerb. Even the horses, had they been blind, could have heard the hum of London in the distance; and the drivers, dozing¹⁰, yet saw through half shut eyes the fiery¹¹ gauze of the eternally burning city. At dawn, at Covent Garden, they laid down their burdens; tables and trestles, even the cobbles were frilled as with some celestial¹² laundry with cabbages, cherries and carnations.

All the windows were open. Music sounded. From behind crimson¹³ curtains, rendered semi-transparent and sometimes blowing wide came the sound of the eternal waltz — After the ball is over, after the dance is done — like a serpent that swallowed its own tail, since the ring was complete from Hammersmith to Shoreditch. Over and over again it was repeated by trombones outside public houses; errand boys whistled it; bands inside private rooms where people were dancing played it. There they sat at little tables at Wapping in the romantic Inn that overhung the river, between timber

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