The island in winter is a German opera house in white, with white balconies and balustrades, white carpeted hallways, white winding stairways, white filigreed ceilings. The trees are expensive displays of Steuben glass, each branch lacquered with a transparent sleeve of crystal. When the wind blows through that forest of glass, you hear a high whining sound. If a fresh snow blankets the ground, it looks like cotton with a slightly bluish tint. If the snow has melted and refrozen and transformed to ice, each footstep sounds like breaking glass. The ice fractures and cracks. All of it is
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