The hush of burning noon had fallen like a spell over the Valley of Roses. The grasshoppers were silent in the long grass; the brown lizards basked motionless on sun-scorched patches of rock; even the bees were asleep, cradled each in the heart of a dreaming flower. Not a leaf stirred in the bronze-green towers of shade that beech and walnut reared, singly or in groups, on the lower slopes; above, on the sheer hillsides, the serried ranks of stone pines had the luster and the rigidity of burnished metalwork. The air, aquiver with heat, seemed curling in bluish, filmy wreaths about the pine stems, as if the trees sent forth visibly their pungent incense; and ever and again warm gusts of that heady aroma swept the valley, overpowering the sweeter breath of its leagues of bloom. From end to end, the levels of the long, narrow glen were incarnadined with the triumph of one flower — Aphrodite’s own.

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📚 Source: Evergreen Stories (1920?) by W. M. L. Hutchinson (1868-1936).