His fantastic attempt was instantly and astonishingly successful.  He could have shouted with triumph as he entered the room; it was as if he had escaped into it.  Once more, as in the days when his writing had had a daily freshness and wonder and promise for him, he was conscious of that new ease and mastery and exhilaration and release.  The air of the place seemed to hold more oxygen; as if his own specific gravity had changed, his very tread seemed less ponderable.  The flowers in the bowls, the fair proportions of the meadowsweet-coloured panels and mouldings, the polished floor, and the lofty and faintly starred ceiling, fairly laughed their welcome.  Oleron actually laughed back, and spoke aloud.

“Oh, you’re pretty, pretty!” he flattered it.

Then he lay down on his couch.

He spent that afternoon as a convalescent who expected a dear visitor might have spent it—­in a delicious vacancy, smiling now and then as if in his sleep, and ever lifting drowsy and contented eyes to his alluring surroundings.  He lay thus until darkness came, and, with darkness, the nocturnal noises of the old house....

But if he waited for any specific happening, he waited in vain.

He waited similarly in vain on the morrow, maintaining, though with less ease, that sensitised-plate-like condition of his mind.  Nothing occurred to give it an impression.  Whatever it was which he so patiently wooed, it seemed to be both shy and exacting.

Then on the third day he thought he understood.  A look of gentle drollery and cunning came into his eyes, and he chuckled.

“Oho, oho!...  Well, if the wind sits in that quarter we must see what else there is to be done.  What is there, now?...  No, I won’t send for Elsie; we don’t need a wheel to break the butterfly on; we won’t go to those lengths, my butterfly....”

He was standing musing, thumbing his lean jaw, looking aslant; suddenly he crossed to his hall, took down his hat, and went out.

“My lady is coquettish, is she?  Well, we’ll see what a little neglect will do,” he chuckled as he went down the stairs.

He sought a railway station, got into a train, and spent the rest of the day in the country.  Oh, yes:  Oleron thought he was the man to deal with Fair Ones who beckoned, and invited, and then took refuge in shyness and hanging back!

He did not return until after eleven that night.

“Now, my Fair Beckoner!” he murmured as he walked along the alley and felt in his pocket for his keys....

Inside his flat, he was perfectly composed, perfectly deliberate, exceedingly careful not to give himself away.  As if to intimate that he intended to retire immediately, he lighted only a single candle; and as he set out with it on his nightly round he affected to yawn.  He went first into his kitchen.  There was a full moon, and a lozenge of moonlight, almost peacock-blue by contrast with his candle-frame,