She gave it, puzzled; for this world so strange to him was the world she knew best.  She could not understand what ailed him.  But it was characteristic of Tilda that she helped first and asked questions afterwards, if she asked them at all.  Usually she found that, given time, they answered themselves.  It was well, perhaps, that she asked none now.  For how could the boy have explained that he seriously believed these shops and lighted windows to be Eastcheap, Illyria, Verona, and these passers-by, brushing briskly along the pavements, to be Shakespeare’s people—­the authentic persons of the plays?  He halted, gazing, striving to identify this figure and that as it hurried between the lights.  Which was Mercutio ruffling to meet a Capulet?  Was this the watch passing?—­Dogberry’s watch?  That broad-shouldered man—­could he be Antonio, Sebastian’s friend, lurking by to his seaport lodging? . . .

They were deep in the town, when he halted with a gasp and a start that half withdrew his hand from her clasp.  A pale green light shone on his face.  It shone out on the roadway from a gigantic illuminated bottle in a chemist’s shop; and in the window stood three similar bottles, each with a gas-jet behind it—­one yellow, one amethystine violet, one ruby red.

His grip, relaxed for a second, closed on her fingers again.  He was drawing her towards the window.  They stared through it together, almost pressing their faces to the pane.

Beyond it, within the shop, surrounded by countless spotlessly polished bottles, his features reflected in a flashing mirror, stood an old man, bending over a mahogany counter, while with delicate fingers he rearranged a line of gallipots in a glass-covered case.

“Is—­is he—­”

The boy paused, and Tilda heard him gulp down something in his throat.

“Suppose,” he whispered, “if—­if it should be God?”

“Ga’r’n!” said Tilda, pulling herself together.

“You’re sure it’s only Prospero?” he asked, still in a whisper.

Before she could answer him—­but indeed she could have found no answer, never having heard of Prospero—­the boy had dragged her forward and thrust open one of the glass swing-doors.  It was he who now showed the courage.

“My lord!”

“Hey?” The old chemist looked up over his spectacles, held for an instant a gallipot suspended between finger and thumb, and set it down with nice judgment.  He was extremely bald, and he pushed his spectacles high up on his scalp.  Then he smiled benevolently.  “What can I do for you, my dears?”

The boy stepped forward bravely, while Tilda—­the game for once taken out of her hands—­could only admire.

“If you would tell us where the Island is—­it is called Holmness—­”

Tilda caught her breath.  But the old chemist still bent forward, and still with his kindly smile.

“Holmness?—­an island?” he repeated in a musing echo.  “Let me see—­”