from being cloth of gold. Why? I wondered. There was no
real financial reason, it was evident, for these penitential rags. But I
remembered that I had known two other millionaires--millionaires not
merely of the imagination--whom it had been impossible to separate from a
certain beloved old coat that had been their familiar for more than
twenty years. It was some odd kink somewhere in the make-up of the
"King," one more trait of his engaging humanity.

When we met at breakfast next morning, glad to see one another again as
few people are at breakfast, it was evident that, so far as the "King"
was concerned, our dream had lost nothing in the night watches. On the
contrary, its wings had grown to an amazing span and iridescence. It
was so impatient for flight, that its feet had to be chained to the
ground--the wise Calypso's doing--with a little plain prose, a detail or
two of preliminary arrangement, and then....

Calypso, it transpired, had certain household matters--of which the
"King" of course, was ever divinely oblivious--that would take her on an
errand into the town. Those disposed of, we two eternal children were at
liberty to be as foolish as we pleased. The "King" bowed his uncrowned
head, as kings, from time immemorial have bowed their diadems before the
quiet command of the domesticities; and it was arranged that I should be
Calypso's escort on her errand.

So we set forth in the freshness of the morning, and the woods that had
been so black and bewildering at my coming opened before us in easy
paths, and all that tropical squalor that had been foul with sweat and
insects seemed strangely vernal to me, so that I could hardly believe
that I had trodden that way before. And for our companion all the way
along--or, at least, for my other companion--was the Wonder of the
World, the beautiful strangeness of living, and that marvel of a man's
days upon the earth which lies in not knowing what a day shall bring
forth, if only we have a little patience with Time--Time, with those
gold keys at his girdle, ready, at any turn of the way, to unlock the
hidden treasure that is to be the meaning of our lives.

How should I try to express what it was to walk by her side, knowing all
that we both knew?--knowing, or giddily believing that I knew, how her
heart, with every breath she took, vibrated like a living flower, with
waves of colour, changing from moment to moment like a happy trembling
dawn. To know--yet not to sa