at of a plumber and decorator with a dusty
disorder of earthenware pipes, sheet lead, ball taps, pattern books of
wall paper, and tins of enamel. He stood pretending to examine these
things, and _coveting_, passionately desiring, the green door.

Then, he said, he had a gust of emotion. He made a run for it, lest
hesitation should grip him again; he went plump with outstretched hand
through the green door and let it slam behind him. And so, in a trice, he
came into the garden that has haunted all his life.

It was very difficult for Wallace to give me his full sense of that garden
into which he came.

There was something in the very air of it that exhilarated, that gave one
a sense of lightness and good happening and well-being; there was
something in the sight of it that made all its colour clean and perfect
and subtly luminous. In the instant of coming into it one was exquisitely
glad--as only in rare moments, and when one is young and joyful one can be
glad in this world. And everything was beautiful there...

Wallace mused before he went on telling me. "You see," he said, with the
doubtful inflection of a man who pauses at incredible things, "there were
two great panthers there... Yes, spotted panthers. And I was not afraid.
There was a long wide path with marble-edged flower borders on either
side, and these two huge velvety beasts were playing there with a ball.
One looked up and came towards me, a little curious as it seemed. It came
right up to me, rubbed its soft round ear very gently against the small
hand I held out, and purred. It was, I tell you, an enchanted garden. I
know. And the size? Oh! it stretched far and wide, this way and that. I
believe there were hills far away. Heaven knows where West Kensington had
suddenly got to. And somehow it was just like coming home.

"You know, in the very moment the door swung to behind me, I forgot the
road with its fallen chestnut leaves, its cabs and tradesmen's carts, I
forgot the sort of gravitational pull back to the discipline and obedience
of home, I forgot all hesitations and fear, forgot discretion, forgot all
the intimate realities of this life. I became in a moment a very glad and
wonder-happy little boy--in another world. It was a world with a different
quality, a warmer, more penetrating and mellower light, with a faint clear
gladness in its air, and wisps of sun-touched cloud in the blueness of its
sky. And before me ran this long wide path, invitingl