July 28, 2013: a small treasure

It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very very near to a world of wonderful beauty.  Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside—but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond—only a glimpse—and heard a note of unearthly music.

This moment came rarely—went swiftly leaving her breathless with the inexplicable delight of it.  She could never recall it—never summon it—never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days.  It never came twice with the same thing.  To-night the dark boughs against the far-off sky had given it.  It had come with a high, wild note in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a greybird lightning on her window-sill in a storm, with the singing of “holy, holy, holy'” in church, with a  glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice-palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she was writing down, a “description” of something.  And always when the flash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious, thing of persistent beauty.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon, L.M. Montgomery