no right
to let them keep you here always, even if I wanted you to be here. But
I hoped and I always hope that I shall leave this place some time
myself, and I did not want to have to leave you here. I would not have
left you here. Promise that you will come back."

"I will come back," Kathleen answered.

"Come along now," said the King, hurrying up to Kathleen again. "It's
time we were dancing this minute."

All the little men and women were moving out of the hall and Kathleen
went with them. In an instant they were again in the passage that
Kathleen remembered. The floor was of gold, like the floor of the
hall, and then she saw that she was walking on the water once more.
The yellow glow was under it still, but fainter than in the hall. The
violet light on the walls of the passage grew dimmer; she saw the
lights that the men and women carried, shining ahead of her and all
around her. Then she looked down at the water and saw the stars
shining up through it, as if there were another sky far down under her
feet. And then--she felt the cool, fresh breath of the outside air,
and it was delicious to her, and she was standing on her own little
pool, and deep down under it there were thousands of stars. She and
all the others walked--or drifted, as it seemed to Kathleen--up the
bank of sweet-smelling new grass, to the little hollowed place, with
the trees and the bushes growing around it and hanging over it, where
Kathleen had first seen the Good People. And then they began the
dance.

[Illustration: ]

IX

A YEAR AND A DAY

When Kathleen did not come home at the time she was expected, her
father and her grandmother were not much surprised at first. She was
in the habit of going where she pleased and of coming back when she
pleased. If she chose to be an hour or two late her father or her
grandmother might ask her why, or they might not think of it. So, on
that May Eve when she danced with the Good People, as it began to get
late and still she did not come, they had no doubt that she had
decided to make her visit at the Sullivans' a little longer than she
had intended. When it got later and still she did not come, her father
said that he would walk over to the Sullivans' and come back with her.
He never thought of not finding her there. Even when he got there and
Ellen told him that Kathleen had gone away hours ago and had said that
she was going home, he did not think that any harm could have come to
her