He opened the casement.

The night was fresh, bright, and very still.

Just before the window was a row of pollard trees, looking black on one side and with a silvery light on the other.

Beneath the trees grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy vegetation with silver-lit leaves and stems here and there.

Farther back beyond the dark trees a roof glittered with dew, to the right was a leafy tree with brilliantly white trunk and branches, and above it shone the moon, nearly at its full, in a pale, almost starless, spring sky.