Outside, as twilight descended through the salty air, girls played hopscotch on the brick walk.
Just before 11.20am an eerie twilight descended on the city, although, for many, broken cloud obscured the view of the vanishing sun.
After introductory remarks and words of encouragement and support, the 64 delegates and J8 staff were treated to heartthrob Dima Bilan's MTV concert in the main palace courtyard, culminating in a spectacular fireworks display as twilight descended just after midnight.
Although twilight sparkles as dusk descends, it often isn't enough to illuminate outside dining.
As twilight descends on Xiaoluoshui village on the lake's north shore, coaches gather.
Twilight was descending on Madison Square Park, and the audience — couples on first dates, toddlers with parents, klatches of co-workers in office clothes — hardly seemed impatient for the concert's close.
Certainly there was no indication that twilight was descending on Oleg V. Deripaska, 35, one of Russia's richest men, over a 90-minute late-afternoon lunch in his private headquarters earlier this week.
Sometimes, when twilight is descending, I go find a bench by the sea and watch the young people peacock up and down the promenade.
He reminds the editor now, addressing him directly (behind him, twilight has descended in the garden), that in his student days he once wrote a much praised essay on the coded language of the disenfranchised.
Perhaps the answer is to live in the past by slowly descending into a twilight world of boxsets and Dave.
But in this crowded neighborhood of east Jerusalem, the city's Arab section, there was something monumental, even defining, about the 30-foot slab descending from the twilight, just after a muezzin called the sunset prayer over the crane's roar.
