said Mabel.

“You’re not a coward,” said Gerald, with what is known as diplomacy. “You’re brave, Mabel. Don’t I know it! You hold Jimmy’s hand and I’ll hold Cathy’s. Now then.”

“I won’t have my hand held,” said Jimmy, of course. “I’m not a kid.”

“Well, Cathy will. Poor little Cathy! Nice brother Jerry’ll hold poor Cathy’s hand.”

Gerald’s bitter sarcasm missed fire here, for Cathy gratefully caught the hand he held out in mockery. She was too miserable to read his mood, as she mostly did. “Oh, thank you, Jerry dear,” she said gratefully; “you are a dear, and I will try not to be frightened.” And for quite a minute Gerald shamedly felt that he had not been quite, quite kind.

So now, leaving the growing goldness of the sunrise, the four went down the stone steps that led to the underground and underwater passage, and everything seemed to grow dark and then to grow into a poor pretence of light again, as the splendour of dawn gave place to the small dogged lighting of the bicycle lamp. The steps did indeed lead to a passage, the beginnings of it choked with the drifted dead leaves of many old autumns. But presently the passage took a turn, there were more steps, down, down, and then the passage was empty and straight—lined above and below and on each side with slabs of marble, very clear and clean. Gerald held Cathy’s hand with more of kindness and less of exasperation than he had supposed possible.

And Cathy, on her part, was surprised to find it possible to be so much less frightened than she expected.

The flame of the bull‘s-eye threw ahead a soft circle of misty light—the children followed it silently. Till, silently and suddenly, the light of the bull’s-eye behaved as the flame of a candle does when you take it out into the sunlight to light a bonfire, or explode a train of gunpowder, or what not. Because now, with feelings mixed indeed, of wonder, and interest, and awe, but no fear, the children found themselves in a great hall, whose arched roof was held up by two rows of round pillars, and whose every corner was filled with a soft, searching, lovely light, filling every cranny, as water fills the rocky secrecies of hidden sea-caves.

“How beautiful!” Kathleen whispered, breathing hard into the tickled ear of her brother, and Mabel caught the hand of Jimmy and whispered, “I must hold your hand—I must hold on to something silly, or I shan’t believe it’s real.”

For this hall in which the children found themselves was the most beautiful place in the world. I won’t describe it, because it does not look the same to any two people, and you wouldn’t understand me if I tried to tell you how it looked to any one of these four. But to each it seemed the most perfect thing possible. I will only say that all round it were great arches. Kathleen saw them as Moorish, Mabel as Tudor, Gerald as Norman, and Jimmy as Churchwarden Gothic. (If you don’t know what these are, ask your uncle who collects brasses, and he will explain, or perhaps Mr. Millar will draw the different kinds of arches for you.11) And through these arches one could see many things—oh! but many things. Through one appeared an olive garden, and in it two lovers who held each other’s hands, under an Italian moon; through another a wild sea, and a ship to whom the wild, racing sea was slave. A third showed a king on his throne, his courtiers obsequious about him; and yet a fourth showed a really good hotel, with the respectable Ugly-Wugly sunning himself on the front doorsteps. There was a mother, bending over a wooden cradle. There was an artist gazing entranced on the picture his wet brush seemed to have that moment completed, a general dying on a field where Victory had planted the standard he loved, and these things were not pictures, but the truest truths, alive, and, as anyone could see, immortal.

Many other pictures there were that these arches framed. And all showed some moment when life had sprung to fire and flower—the best that the soul of man could ask or man’s destiny grant. And the really good hotel had its place here too, because there are some souls that ask no higher thing of life than “a really good hotel.”

“Oh, I am glad we came; I am, I am!” Kathleen murmured, and held fast