“It was very still. The tree was tall and straggling. It had thrown its briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long streamers trailed thick, right down to the grass, splashing the darkness everywhere with great spilt stars, pure white. In bosses of ivory and in large splashed stars the roses gleamed on the darkness of foliage and stems and grass. Paul and Miriam stood close together, silent, and watched. Point after point the steady roses shone out to them, seeming to kindle something in their souls. The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out the roses.”

“It had grown darker now; it was full night already, with the swiftness of the mountainous latitudes. The square of sky over the patio was soft and dark as indigo velour, with magnificent stars like many-legged silver spiders festooned on its underside. Below them the white roses gleamed phosphorescently in the starlight, with a magnesium-like glow. There was a tiny splash from the depths of the well as a pebble or grain of dislodged earth fell in. ("The Moon Of Montezuma")”

“The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the unclear voices of children, already gathered like crikets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight.”

“Katsa watched the long grass moving around them. The wind pushed it, attacked it, struck it in one place and then another. It rose and fell and rose again. It flowed, like water.”

“She went to the fence and sat there, watching the gold clouds fall topieces, and go in immense, rose-coloured ruin towards the darkness. Goldflamed to scarlet, like pain in its intense brightness. Then the scarletsank to rose, and rose to crimson, and quickly the passion went out ofthe sky. All the world was dark grey. Paul scrambled quickly down withhis basket, tearing his shirt-sleeve as he did so.”

“On the porch were the still-smoking remains of long-stemmed roses, evidence that someone angry and passive-aggressive didn't know Peter was out of town.”