to find again the house of Reverie--to them who have learned the
way.

On I journeyed, then, following as I had been directed the main road
to Vanity Fair. But whether it is that the Fair is more difficult to
arrive at than to depart from, or is really a hard day's journey even
from the gay parlour of the World's End, it already began to be
evening, and yet no sign of bunting or booth or clamour or smoke.

And it was at length to a noiseless Fair, far from all vanity, that I
came at sunset--the cypresses of a solitary graveyard. I was tired out
and desired only rest; so dismounting and leading Rosinante, I turned
aside willingly into its peace.

It seemed I had entered a new earth. The lane above had wandered on in
the gloaming of its hedges and over-arching trees. Here, all the
clouds of sunset stood, caught up in burning gold. Even as I paused,
dazzled a moment by the sudden radiance, from height to height the
wild bright rose of evening ran. Not a tottering stone, black,
well-nigh shapeless with age, not a green bush, but seemed to dwell
unconsumed in its own fire above this desolate ground. The trees that
grew around me--willow and yew, thorn and poplar--were but flaming
cages for the wild birds that perched in their branches.

Above these sound-dulled mansions trod lightly, as if of thought,
Rosinante's gilded shoes. I wandered on in a strange elation of mind,
filled with a desperate desire ever to remember how flamed this rose
between earth and sky, how throbbed this jargon of delight. And
turning as if in hope to share my enthusiasm, a childish peal of
laughter showed me I was not alone.

Beneath a canopy of holly branches and yew two children sat playing.
The nearer child's hair was golden, glistening round his face of
roses, and he it was who had laughed, tumbling on the sward. But the
face of the further child was white almost as crystal, and the dark
hair that encircled his head with its curved lines seemed as it were
the shadow of the gold it showed beside. These children, it was plain,
had been running and playing across the tombs; but now they were
stooping together at some earnest sport. To me, even if they had seen
me, they as yet paid no heed.

I passed slowly towards them, deeming them at first of solitude's
creation, my eyes dazzled so with the sun. But as I approached, so the
branches beneath which they played gradually disparted, and I saw not
far distant from them one sitting who evidently