of the stream.'
'Easily,' she said, 'only it must be wrapped up in something. I'll get Jonah's sponge-bag and lend it you. Only you must promise faithfully to return it in case we go to the seaside in the summer.'
'And perhaps some of those tears we were talking about will stick on it and leave their marks before they go on to the sea,' he suggested.
'Oh, but they'd be too sad,' she answered quickly. 'They're much better lost in the sea, aren't they?'
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Thus the poetry in his soul that he could not utter, he lived. Without any conscious effort of the imagination, the instant Nixie, or the thought of her, stood beside him—lo, he was in Fairyland. It was so real that it was positively bewildering.
And the rest of that quiet household, without knowing it, contributed to its reality. For, to begin with, the place was delightfully 'out of the world'; and, after that, the gradations between the two regions seemed so easy and natural: the shadowy personality of his sister; the dainty little French governess flitting everywhere with her plaintive voice in the wake of the elusive children; then the children themselves—Jonah, the mischievous; Toby with her shining face of onion-skin; and, last of all, the host of tumbling animals, the mysterious cats, the kittens, all fluff and wonder; and the whole of it set amid the scenery of flowers, hills, and sea. It was impossible to tell exactly where the actual threshold lay, this shifting, fluid threshold dividing the two worlds; but there can be no question that Paul passed it day by day without the least difficulty, and that it was Nixie who knew all the quickest short-cuts.
And to all who—since childhood—have lived in Fairyland and tasted of its sweet innocence and loveliness, comes sooner or later the desire to transfer something of these qualities to the outer world. Paul felt this more and more as the days passed. The wish to beautify the lives of others grew in him with a sudden completeness that proved it to have been there latent all the time. Through the voices of Nixie, Jonah, and Toby, as it were, he heard the voices—those myriad, faint, unhappy voices—of the world's neglected children a-calling to him: 'Tell us the Aventures too!'—'Take us with you through 'that Crack!'—' Show us the Wind, and let us climb with you the Scaffolding of Night.'
And Paul, listening in his deep heart, began to understand that Nixie's education of himself was but a beginning: all unconsciously that elfin child was surely becoming also his inspiration. This first lesson in self-expression she had taught him was like the trickle that would lead to the bursting of the dam. The waters of his enthusiasms would presently pour out with the rush of genuine power behind them. What he had to say, do, and live—all forms of self-expression—were to find a larger field of usefulness than the mere gratification of his personal sense of beauty.
As yet, however, the thought only played dimly to and fro at the back of his mind, seeking a way of escape. The greater outlet could not come all at once. The germ of the desire lay there in secret development, but the thing he should do had not yet appeared.
So, for the time being, he continued to live in Fairyland and write Aventures.
It was really incalculable the effect of enchantment this little yellow-haired girl cast upon him—hard to believe, hard to realise. So true, so exquisite was it, however, that he almost came to forget her age, and that she was actually but a child. To him she seemed more and more an intimate companion to the soul who had existed always, and that both he and she were ageless. It was their souls that played, talked, caressed, not merely their minds or bodies In her flower-like little figure dwelt assuredly an old and ripened soul; one, too, it seemed to him sometimes, that hardly belonged to this work at all.
There was that about their relationship which made it eternal—it always had been somewhere it always would be—somewhere. No confinings of flesh, no limitations of mind and sense no conditions of mere time and space, could lay their burden upon it for long. It belonged most sweetly to the real things which are conditionless.
Moreover, one of the chief effects of the work of Faery, experts say, is that Time is done away with; emotions are inexhaustible and last for ever continually renewing themselves; the Fairies dance for years instead of only for a night; their minds and bodies grow not old; their desires, and the objects of their desires, pass not away.
'So, unquestionably,' said Paul to himself from time to time as he reflected upon the situation, 'I am bewitched. I must see what there is that I can do in the matter to protect myself from further depredations!'
Yet all he did immediately, so far as can be ascertained among the sources of this veracious history, was to collect the 'Aventures' already written and journey with them one fine day to London, where he had an interview of some length 'with a publisher—Dick's publisher. The result, at any rate, was—the records prove it—that some;time afterwards he received a letter in which it was plainly stated that 'the success of such a book is hard to predict, but it has qualities, both literary and imaginative, which entitle it to a hearing'; and thus that in due course the said 'Aventures of a Prisoner in Fairyland' appeared upon the bookstalls. For the publishers, being the foremost in the land, took the high view that seemed almost independent of mercenary calculations; and it is interesting to note that the years justified their judgment, and that the 'Aventures' may now be found upon the table of every house in England where there dwells a true child, be that child seven or seventy.
And any profits that Paul collected from the sale went, not into his own pocket, but were put aside, as the sequel shall show, for a secret purpose that lay hidden at this particular stage of the story among the very roots of his heart and being. The summer, meanwhile, passed quickly away, and August melted into September, finding hint? still undecided about his return to America.
For the rest, there was no hurry. There was another six months in which to make up his mind'; Meanwhile, also, he made frequent use of the 'Crack,' and the changes in his soul went rapidly forward.
CHAPTER XIX
There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn,
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor
Paved her light steps;—on an imagined shore
Under the grey beak of some promontory
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not
Epipsychidion
One afternoon in late September he made his way alone across the hills. Clouds blew thinly over a sky of watery blue, driven by an idle wind the roses had left behind. It seemed a day strayed from out the summer that now found itself, thrilled and a little confused, in the path of autumn—and summer had sent forth this soft wind to bring it back to the fold.
The 'Crack' was always near at hand on such a day, and Paul slipped in without the least difficulty. He found himself in a valley of the Blue Mountains hitherto unknown, and, so wandering, came presently to a bend of the river
