his Church."

King Auberon got up absently.

"There is something in what you say," he said. "You seem to have been
thinking, young man."

"Only feeling, sire," answered the Provost. "I was born, like other
men, in a spot of the earth which I loved because I had played boys'
games there, and fallen in love, and talked with my friends through
nights that were nights of the gods. And I feel the riddle. These
little gardens where we told our loves. These streets where we brought
out our dead. Why should they be commonplace? Why should they be
absurd? Why should it be grotesque to say that a pillar-box is poetic
when for a year I could not see a red pillar-box against the yellow
evening in a certain street without being wracked with something of
which God keeps the secret, but which is stronger than sorrow or joy?
Why should any one be able to raise a laugh by saying 'the Cause of
Notting Hill'?--Notting Hill where thousands of immortal spirits blaze
with alternate hope and fear."

Auberon was flicking dust off his sleeve with quite a new seriousness
on his face, distinct from the owlish solemnity which was the pose of
his humour.

"It is very difficult," he said at last. "It is a damned difficult
thing. I see what you mean; I agree with you even up to a point--or I
should like to agree with you, if I were young enough to be a prophet
and poet. I feel a truth in everything you say until you come to the
words 'Notting Hill.' And then I regret to say that the old Adam
awakes roaring with laughter and makes short work of the new Adam,
whose name is Wayne."

For the first time Provost Wayne was silent, and stood gazing dreamily
at the floor. Evening was closing in, and the room had grown darker.

"I know," he said, in a strange, almost sleepy voice, "there is truth
in what you say, too. It is hard not to laugh at the common names--I
only say we should not. I have thought of a remedy; but such thoughts
are rather terrible."

"What thoughts?" asked Auberon.

The Provost of Notting Hill seemed to have fallen into a kind of
trance; in his eyes was an elvish light.

"I know of a magic wand, but it is a wand that only one or two may
rightly use, and only seldom. It is a fairy wand of great fear,
stronger than those who use it--often frightful, often wicked to use.
But whatever is touched with it is never again wholly common; whatever
is touched with it takes a magic from outside the world. If I touch,
with this fairy wan