to
earth by laying hands on him and bundling him back into his place.
There he remained, being a docile urchin; but his eyes remained fixed
on Maisie Shepherd. She was only a rosebud beauty of an English girl,
her beauty heightened by the colour of distress, but to Paul the
radiance of her person almost rivalled the wonder of her perfume. It
was his first meeting of a goddess face to face, and he surrendered his
whole being in adoration.

In a few minutes the children were marched through the squalid streets,
a strident band, to the dingy railway station, a grimy proletariat
third-class railway station in which the sign "First Class Waiting
Room" glared an outrage and a mockery, and were marshalled into the
waiting train. The wonderful experience of which Paul had dreamed for
weeks--he had never ridden in a train before--began; and soon the murky
environs of the town were left behind and the train sped through the
open country.

His companions in the railway carriage crowded at the windows, fighting
vigorously for right of place; but Paul sat alone in the middle of the
seat, unmoved by the new sensation and speed, and by the glimpses of
blue sky and waving trees above the others' heads. The glory of the day
was blotted out until he should see and smell the goddess again. At the
wayside station where they descended he saw her in the distance, and
the glory came once more. She caught his eye, smiled and nodded. He
felt a queer thrill run through him. He had been singled out from among
all the boys. He alone knew her.

Brakes took them from the station down a country road and, after a mile
or so, through stone gates of a stately park, where wonder after wonder
was set out before Paul's unaccustomed eyes. On either side of this
roadway stretched rolling grass with clumps and glades of great trees
in their July bravery--more trees than Paul imagined could be in the
world. There were sunlit upland patches and cool dells of shade
carpeted with golden buttercups, where cattle fed lazily. Once a herd
of fallow deer browsing by the wayside scuttled away at the noisy
approach of the brakes. Only afterward did Paul learn their name and
nature: to him then they were mythical beasts of fairyland. Once also
the long pile-of the Tudor house came into view, flashing-white in the
sunshine. The teacher in charge of the brake explained that it was the
Marquis of Chudley's residence. It was more beautiful than anything
Paul had ever se