without
knowing why, was fitted with a pair of white kid gloves. Of dinner
at the hotel he remembered nothing except that the candles on the
tables had red shades, of which the silverware gave funny
reflections; that the same waiter flitted about in the penumbra; and
that Sir Harry, who was dressed like the waiter, said, "Wake up,
young Marasheno! Do you take your coffee black?" "It's usually pale
brown at home," answered Taffy; at which Sir Harry laughed again.
"Black will suit you better to-night," he said, and poured out a
small cupful, which Taffy drank and found exceedingly nasty. And a
moment later he was wide awake, and the three were following a young
woman along a passage which seemed to run in a complete circle.
The young woman flung open a door; they entered a little room with a
balcony in front; and the first glorious vision broke on the child
with a blaze of light, a crash of music, and the murmur of hundreds
of voices.

Faces, faces, faces!--faces mounting from the pit below him, up and
up to the sky-blue ceiling, where painted goddesses danced and
scattered pink roses around the enormous gasalier. Fauns piping on
the great curtain, fiddles sawing in the orchestra beneath, ladies in
gay silks and jewels leaning over the gilt balconies opposite--which
were real, and which a vision only? He turned helplessly to George
and Sir Harry. Yes, _they_ were real. But what of Nannizabuloe, and
the sand-hills, and the little parsonage to which that very morning
he had turned to wave his handkerchief?

A bell rang, and the curtain rose upon a company of russet-brown
elves dancing in a green wood. The play was _Jack the Giant-killer_;
but Taffy, who knew the story in the book by heart, found the story
on the stage almost meaningless. That mattered nothing; it was the
world, the new and unimagined world, stretching deeper and still
deeper as the scenes were lifted--a world in which solid walls
crumbled, and forests melted, and loveliness broke through the ruins,
unfolding like a rose; it was this that seized on the child's heart
until he could have wept for its mere beauty. Often he had sought
out the trout-pools on the moors behind the towans, and lying at full
length had watched the fish moving between the stones and
water-plants; and watching through a summer's afternoon had longed to
change places with them and glide through their grottoes or anchor
among the reed-stalks and let the ripple run over him.