did as she was asked and laid the square of folded silk before me. I
put back the covering, showing that sumptuous braid. The rich fragrance
of the gold pomander wrapped with it filled the air like a vivifying
elixir. Phillida gathered up the braid with a cry of envious rapture.

"Oh! The gorgeous thing! How do some lucky girls have hair like that? If
it was unbound, my two hands could not hold it all. What a pity to have
cut it! Look, Ethan, how it crinkles and glitters."

She held it out to him, extended across her palms. Vere refrained from
touching the braid, surveying it where it lay. Being a mere bachelor, I
had no idea of Phillida's emotions, until Vere's usual gravity broke in
a mischievous, heart-warming smile into the brown eyes uplifted to him.

"Beautiful," he agreed politely.

No more. But as I saw the wistful envy pass quite away from my little
cousin's plain face and leave her content, I advanced in respect for
him.

In the beginning, it was even harder to speak than I had anticipated.
When Phillida laid the braid back in its wrapping, I left it uncovered
before me and looked at its reassuring reality rather than at my
listeners. How, I wondered, could anyone be expected to credit the story
I had to tell? How should I find words to embody it?

Only at first! Whether there clung about me some atmosphere of that land
between the worlds where I so recently had stood; or the room indeed
kept, as I fancied, the melancholy chill of the unseen tide that had
washed through it, I met no scepticism from the two who heard my tale of
wild experience. They did not interrupt me. Phillida crept close to her
husband, putting her hand in his, but she did not exclaim or question.

Silence held us all for a while after I had finished. I had a
discouraged sense of inadequacy. After all, they had received but a
meagre outline. The color and body of the events escaped speech. How
could they feel what I had felt? How could they conceive the charm of
Desire Michell, the white magic of her voice in the dark, the force of
her personality that could impress her image "sight unseen" beyond all
time to erase? How convey to a listener that, understanding her so
little, I yet knew her so well?

"I have told you all this because I need your help," I said presently.
"Will you give it to me?"

"Go away!" Phillida burst forth. She beat her palms together in her
earnestness. "Cousin Roger, take your car and go away--far off! Go
w