t white
moonshine which made the beautiful brightness.

He wondered at first why he felt so unhappy, then he remembered how
Helen had gone away and how hateful the nurse had been. And now she
would pull down the city and Helen would never see it. And he would
never be able to build such a beautiful one again. In the morning it
would be gone, and he would not be able even to remember how it was
built.

The moonlight was very bright.

'I wonder how my city looks by moonlight?' he said.

And then, all in a thrilling instant, he made up his mind to go down and
see for himself how it did look.

He slipped on his dressing-gown, opened his door softly, and crept along
the corridor and down the broad staircase, then along the gallery and
into the drawing-room. It was very dark, but he felt his way to a window
and undid the shutter, and there lay his city, flooded with moonlight,
just as he had imagined it.

He gazed on it for a moment in ecstasy and then turned to shut the door.
As he did so he felt a slight strange giddiness and stood a moment with
his hand to his head. He turned and went again towards the city, and
when he was close to it he gave a little cry, hastily stifled, for fear
some one should hear him and come down and send him to bed. He stood and
gazed about him bewildered and, once more, rather giddy. For the city
had, in a quick blink of light, followed by darkness, disappeared. So
had the drawing-room. So had the chair that stood close to the table. He
could see mountainous shapes raising enormous heights in the distance,
and the moonlight shone on the tops of them. But he himself seemed to be
in a vast, flat plain. There was the softness of long grass round his
feet, but there were no trees, no houses, no hedges or fences to break
the expanse of grass. It seemed darker in some parts than others. That
was all. It reminded him of the illimitable prairie of which he had read
in books of adventure.

'I suppose I'm dreaming,' said Philip, 'though I don't see how I can
have gone to sleep just while I was turning the door handle.
However----'

He stood still expecting that something would happen. In dreams
something always does happen, if it's only that the dream comes to an
end. But nothing happened now--Philip just stood there quite quietly and
felt the warm soft grass round his ankles.

Then, as his eyes became used to the darkness of the plain, he saw some
way off a very steep bridge leading up to a da