It was a summer day, bright and hot.

Alice, busy all day, complained of fatigue and went to bed soon after tea.
The windows were open and the house was perfumed with odors from the garden.

At twilight I went out and walked under the elms, whose pendant boughs were motionless.

I watched the stars as they came out one by one above the pale green ring of the horizon and glittered in the evening sky, which darkened slowly.

I was coming up the gravel walk when I heard a step at the upper end of it which arrested me.