d cried and stamped and shouted, so
that he had been allowed to return. Amongst the things that he saw there
were the reflections that the outside world made upon the glass; it
would be stained, sometimes, with a strange, green reflection of the
fields beyond the wall; sometimes it would catch the blue of the sky,
or the red and gold of the setting sun; sometimes it would be grey
with waving shadows across its surface, as though one were under water.
Through the dirty windows the country, on fine days, shone like distant
tapestry, and in the glass that covered the farther side of the place
strange reflections were caught: of cows, horses, walls, and trees--as
though in a kind of magic mirror.

Another thing that Jeremy felt there, was that he was in a glass cage
swinging over the whole world. If one shut one's eyes one could easily
fancy that one was swinging out--swinging--swinging, and that, suddenly
perhaps, the cage would be detached from the house and go sailing,
like a magic carpet, to Arabia and Persia, and anywhere you pleased to
command.

To-day the glass burnt like fire, and the green fields came floating
up to be transfigured there like running water. The house was utterly
still; the red glass door shut off the world. Jeremy sat, his arms
tightly round Hamlet's neck, on the dirty floor, a strange mixture of
misery, weariness, fright, and anger. There was already in him a strain
of impatience, so that he could not bear simply to sit down and bewail
something as, for instance, both his sisters were doing at this moment.
He must act. They could not bo happy without their mother; he himself
wanted her so badly that even now, there in the flaming conservatory, if
he had allowed himself to do such a thing, he would have sat and cried
and cried and cried. But he was not going to cry. Mary and Helen could
cry--they were girls; he was going to do something.

As he sat there, getting hotter and hotter, there grew, larger and
larger before his eyes, the figure of Terrible God. That image of
Someone of a vast size sitting in the red-hot sky, his white beard
flowing, his eyes frowning, grew ever more and more awful. Jeremy stared
up into the glass, his eyes blinking, the sweat beginning to pour down
his nose, and yet his body shivering with terror. But he had strung
himself up to meet Him. Somehow he was going to save his mother and
hinder her departure. At an instant, inside him, he was crying: "I want
my mother! I wa