But I remember distinctly that late one hot afternoon, as the sun was setting, I found myself alone in a remote part of a deserted garden.

The gray walls overgrown with ivy and mosses separated its grove of trees from the moorland and the rocky country round about it.

For me, brought up in the city, the old and solitary garden, where even the fruit trees were dying from old age, had all the mystery and charm of a primeval forest.

I crossed a border of box, and I was in the midst of a large uncultivated tract filled with climbing asparagus and great weeds.

Then I cowered down, as is the fashion of little children, that I might be more effectually hidden by what hid me sufficiently already, and I remained there motionless with eyes dilated and with quickening spirit, half afraid, half enraptured.