ws who had been so loth
to let me go. It showed a long grey street in West Kensington, in that
chill hour of afternoon before the lamps are lit, and I was there, a
wretched little figure, weeping aloud, for all that I could do to restrain
myself, and I was weeping because I could not return to my dear
playfellows who had called after me, 'Come back to us! Come back to us
soon!' I was there. This was no page in a book, but harsh reality; that
enchanted place and the restraining hand of the grave mother at whose knee
I stood had gone--whither had they gone?"

He halted again, and remained for a time staring into the fire.

"Oh! the woefulness of that return!" he murmured.

"Well?" I said, after a minute or so.

"Poor little wretch I was!--brought back to this grey world again! As I
realised the fulness of what had happened to me, I gave way to quite
ungovernable grief. And the shame and humiliation of that public weeping
and my disgraceful home-coming remain with me still. I see again the
benevolent-looking old gentleman in gold spectacles who stopped and spoke
to me--prodding me first with his umbrella. 'Poor little chap,' said he;
'and are you lost then?'--and me a London boy of five and more! And he
must needs bring in a kindly young policeman and make a crowd of me, and
so march me home. Sobbing, conspicuous, and frightened, I came back from
the enchanted garden to the steps of my father's house.

"That is as well as I can remember my vision of that garden--the garden
that haunts me still. Of course, I can convey nothing of that
indescribable quality of translucent unreality, that _difference_
from the common things of experience that hung about it all; but that--
that is what happened. If it was a dream, I am sure it was a day-time and
altogether extraordinary dream... H'm!--naturally there followed a
terrible questioning, by my aunt, my father, the nurse, the governess--
everyone...

"I tried to tell them, and my father gave me my first thrashing for
telling lies. When afterwards I tried to tell my aunt, she punished me
again for my wicked persistence. Then, as I said, everyone was forbidden
to listen to me, to hear a word about it. Even my fairytale books were
taken away from me for a time--because I was too 'imaginative.' Eh? Yes,
they did that! My father belonged to the old school... And my story was
driven back upon myself. I whispered it to my pillow--my pillow that was
often damp and salt to my whisperin