"

Thus she drew him to the Western Garden, so that for the moment she
seemed to have it all in her own hands. For here there were more
lights, and even more extravagant and fantastic display of electric
jewelry, more garlands of diamond and crystal, illuminating, decorating
everything. And there were rubies hanging in strange trees, and at their
feet the glamour of light dissolved, half of it perished, gone from the
world, drunk up by the earth, half living on where gray walks wound like
paths in a dream, between rings of spectral green, islands of dimmed,
mysterious red, so transformed, so unclothed and clothed again by
glamour, as to be hardly discernible as beds of geraniums in grass.

Here they wandered for what seemed an eternity of bliss.

"What more do you want?" said Winny. "Isn't this beautiful enough for
anybody?" Neither of them had any idea that the beauty and the glamour
of it was in their own souls as they drank each other's mystery.

"Let's just sit and listen to the band," she said. And they sat and
listened to it for another eternity, till Ranny became restless. For
thirteen and eleven pence halfpenny was burning in his pocket.

The thought of it made him take her to a restaurant where they sat for
quite a long time and drank coffee and ate ices. Winny submitted to the
ices. They were delicious, and she enjoyed them without a shadow of
misgiving. She was, in fact, triumphant, for she looked on ices as the
close and crown of everything, and she calculated that out of that
sovereign there would be exactly eleven and twopence halfpenny left.

"Well--it's been lovely. And now we must go home," she said.

"Go home? Not much. Why, we've only just begun." He looked at her.
"D'you suppose I don't know what _you're_ up to? You're jolly clever,
but you can't take _me_ in, Winky. Not for a single minute."

"Well, then, Ranny, let me pay for _something_." And she took out her
little purse.

After that it was sheer headlong, shameful defeat for Winky. He had
found her out, he had seen through her man[oe]uvers, and he and the
Exhibition, the destructive and terrible Enchantress, had been laughing
at her all the time. A delirious devil had entered into Ranny with the
coffee and the ices, urging him to spend. And Winny ceased to struggle.
He knew at what point she would yield, he knew what temptations would be
irresistible. He got round her with the Alpine Ride; the Joy Wheel
fairly undermined her moral being