f sweet wrinkles, and yet but a boy's
face. The wrinkles, you could see, were but so many threads of gold which
happy laughter had left there. Siss called him her Punchinello, likewise
her poet, for Jim is a poet who makes his poetry of his own bright face
and body, acts it night after night to an audience, and the people laugh
and cry as he plays, for his face is like a bubbling spring, full of
laughing eddies on the surface, but ever so deep with sweet freshness
beneath--and some catch sight of the deeps. The world knows him as a
comedian. Siss knows him as a poet, and because she knows what loving
tender tears are in him as well as laughter, she calls him her
Punchinello.

This is what she was writing: 'How near our home seems now, Jimmie boy!
Every night as you go on--and you are just going on now--I feel our home
draw nearer: and, do you know, all this week our star has seemed to grow
brighter and brighter. Can you see it in London? It comes out here about
six o'clock--first very pale, like a dream, and then fuller and fuller and
warmer and warmer. Sometimes I say that it is the sovereigns we are
putting into the bank that make it so much brighter; and I am sure it
_was_ brighter after that last ten pounds.... You are laughing at me,
aren't you? Never mind; you can be just as silly. Dear, dear, funny little
face!'

I had reached just so far in my dream when the oysters came, and that is
why I wished I had ordered 'Anglos' and no roll.

When I looked again, Siss had stopped writing, and was sitting with her
head in her hands dreaming. I looked into her eyes, felt ashamed for a
moment, and then stepped into her dream. I felt I was not worthy to walk
there, but I took off my hat and told myself that I was reverent.

It was a pretty flat, full of dainty rooms, and I followed her from one to
another, and one there was just like that in which I had seen her
writing, with the old escritoire, and the books, and the burning candles,
and the silver photograph shrine. She walked about very wistfully, and her
eyes were full. So were mine, and I wanted to sob, but feared lest she
should hear. Presently Jim joined her, and they walked together, and said
to each other, 'Think, this is our home at last'--'Think, this is our home
at last. O love, our home--together for evermore!'

This they said many times, and at length they came to a room that had a
door white as ivory, and I caught a breath of freshest flowers as they
opene