y--though it was more subtly
than suddenly done. "What?"

"Of a fairy that's flown from a butterfly moon, just alighting at my
threshold and asking to come in."

"Wouldn't a fairy be unseemly forward to come to a young man's threshold
and ask admittance?"

"Not admittance, but admission--to my dreams, where nothing is real but
you and beauty."

"Dreams are for the old, the young shall see visions!--isn't there a
quotation like that?" she asked, smiling.

"You're not playing fair," I laughed--for I was afraid not to laugh,
wanting desperately to say that I was seeing the vision now that would
be my dream forever!

"I'll play fair if I know the rules," she also laughed. "You haven't
told them to me!"

"We'll make them up as we go along!"

"But what are we going to play?"

"Make-believe," I eagerly cried. "That we're exploring our Secret world
where we'll come after,"--there was no laugh in my voice now--"you've
gone to Azuria, and I'm here alone."

She gave my face a quick, searching look.

"And we only have to pass between these two big trees?" she asked, half
lightly, half timidly.

"Only through that gateway, and we're in our world!"

"Why should I go, I wonder?" The question was whispered, almost
unconsciously, and catching the tone of it I also whispered:

"To plant a memory, Doloria, that will grow and bloom as long as we
live; where each of us may come--when we're lonely."

What forces, intangible, supernal, were at work here no man can tell.
Philosophers stumble, fools blunder, and the truth dances on ahead
through Life's woodland of mysteries--one instant revealing itself in a
golden shaft of sunlight, hiding the next with smothered laughter in the
black shadow of a fern, while seekers after it tramp past in grumbling
blindness.

At this moment our wood seemed rich with mystic presage. Pleadingly my
hands went out to her, and trustfully she put hers into them. Slowly I
backed between the two big trees, our eyes held as two charmed beings.
Everything about me called to her, everything in her urged compliance;
and I knew, as did she, that something strange was happening. Yet when I
halted she did not falter, but came on, bravely, sweetly, into my arms.

That she should have done this was as inevitable as it was gloriously
true. We could no more have continued to stroll side by side through our
Oasis, commenting on the seasons, sometimes rapturous over a sunset or
the call of a bird, than we c