Go on," I said. "I understand."

They were realities--yes, they must have been; people moved

and things came and went in them; my dear mother, whom I had near

forgotten; then my father, stern and upright, the servants, the

nursery, all the familiar things of home. Then the front door and

the busy streets, with traffic to and fro: I looked and marvelled,

and looked half doubtfully again into the woman's face and turned

the pages over, skipping this and that, to see more of this book,

and more, and so at last I came to myself hovering and hesitating

outside the green door in the long white wall, and felt again the

conflict and the fear.

'And next?' I cried, and would have turned on, but the cool

hand of the grave woman delayed me.

"'Next?' I insisted, and struggled gently with her hand,

pulling up her fingers with all my childish strength, and as she

yielded and the page came over she bent down upon me like a shadow

and kissed my brow.

"But the page did not show the enchanted garden, nor the

panthers, nor the girl who had led me by the hand, nor the

playfellows who had been so loth to let me go. It showed a long

grey street in West Kensington, on that chill hour of afternoon

The Door in the Wall And Other Stories