the English of the splendour of Elizabeth; and yet when I heard those words my eyes felt sore as with impending tears—­it should be remembered how far away I was.  I think I was silent for a little while.  Suddenly I saw that the man who kept the shop was asleep.  That habit was strangely like the ways of a man who if he were then alive would be (if I could judge from the time-worn look of the lion) over a thousand years old.  But then how old was I?  It is perfectly clear that Time moves over the Lands of Dream swifter or slower than over the fields we know.  For the dead, and the long dead, live again in our dreams; and a dreamer passes through the events of days in a single moment of the Town-Hall’s clock.  Yet logic did not aid me and my mind was puzzled.  While the old man slept—­and strangely like in face he was to the old man who had shown me first the little, old backdoor—­I went to the far end of his wattled shop.  There was a door of a sort on leather hinges.  I pushed it open and there I was again under the notice-board at the back of the shop, at least the back of Go-by Street had not changed.  Fantastic and remote though this grass street was with its purple flowers and the golden spires, and the world ending at its opposite pavement, yet I breathed more happily to see something again that I had seen before.  I thought I had lost forever the world I knew, and now that I was at the back of Go-by Street again I felt the loss less than when I was standing where familiar things ought to be; and I turned my mind to what was left me in the vast Lands of Dream and thought of Saranoora.  And when I saw the cottages again I felt less lonely even at the thought of the cat though he generally laughed at the things I said.  And the first thing that I saw when I saw the witch was that I had lost the world and was going back for the rest of my days to the palace of Singanee.  And the first thing that she said was:  “Why!  You’ve been through the wrong door,” quite kindly for she saw how unhappy I looked.  And I said, “Yes, but it’s all the same street.  The whole street’s altered and London’s gone and the people I used to know and the houses I used to rest in, and everything; and I’m tired.”

“What did you want to go through the wrong door for?” she said.

“O, that made no difference,” I said.

“O, didn’t it?” she said in a contradictory way.

“Well I wanted to get to the near end of the street so as to find my boat quickly by the Embankment.  And now my boat, and the Embankment and—­and——.”

“Some people are always in such a hurry,” said the old black cat.  And I felt too unhappy to be angry and I said nothing more.

And the old witch said, “Now which way do you want to go?” and she was talking rather like a nurse to a small child.  And I said, “I have nowhere to go.”

And she said, “Would you rather go home or go to the ivory palace of Singanee.”  And I said, “I’ve got a headache, and I don’t want to go anywhere, and I’m tired of the Lands of Dream.”