ither side winked in a continuous
blur or where the forest was thinner seemed like knitting-needles to
gather up folds of landscape.

After they had traversed all the wider roads at this speed, somewhere
in the very heart of the forest Raoul turned sharply off along a
wagoner's track over whose green ruts the car jolted abominably, but
just when it would have been impossible to go on, he stopped and they
all got out.

"You don't know why I've brought you here," he laughed.

Michael and Stella looked their perplexity to the great delight of the
young man. "Wait a minute and you'll see," he chuckled. He was leading
the way along a narrow grass-grown lane whose hedges on either side were
gleaming with big blackberries.

"We shall soon be right out of the world," said Stella. "Won't that
worry you, Monsieur?"

"Well, yes, it would for a very long time," replied the Prince, in a
tone of such wistfulness as for the moment made him seem middle-aged.
"But, look," he cried, and triumphant youth returned to him once more.

The lane had ended in a forest clearing whose vivid turf was looped with
a chain of small ponds blue as steel. On the farther side stood a
cottage with diamonded lattices and a gabled roof and a garden full of
deep crimson phlox glowing against a background of gnarled and somber
hawthorns. Cottage and clearing were set in a sweeping amphitheater of
beechwoods.

"It reminds me of Gawaine and the Green Knight," said Michael.

"I'll take you inside," Raoul offered.

They walked across the small common silently, so deeply did they feel
they were trespassing on some enchantment. From the cottage chimney
curled a film of smoke that gave a voiceless voice to the silence, and
when as they paused in the lych-gate, Castera-Verduzan clanged the bell,
it seemed indeed the summons to waken from a spell sleepers long ago
bewitched.

"Surely nobody is going to answer that bell," said Stella.

"Why, yes, of course, Ursule will open it. Ursule! Ursule!" he cried.
"C'est moi, Monsieur Raoul."

The cottage door opened and, evidently much delighted, Ursule came
stumping down the path. She was an old woman whose rosy face was
pectinated with fine wrinkles as delicate as the pluming of a moth's
wing, while everything about her dress gave the same impression of
extreme fineness, though the stuff was only a black bombazine and the
tippet round her shoulders was of coarse lace. When she and Raoul had
talked together in