Some day, perhaps, I shall return as he has foretold, for it is ever easy to find again the house of Reverie—­to them who have learned the way.

On I journeyed, then, following as I had been directed the main road to Vanity Fair.  But whether it is that the Fair is more difficult to arrive at than to depart from, or is really a hard day’s journey even from the gay parlour of the World’s End, it already began to be evening, and yet no sign of bunting or booth or clamour or smoke.

And it was at length to a noiseless Fair, far from all vanity, that I came at sunset—­the cypresses of a solitary graveyard.  I was tired out and desired only rest; so dismounting and leading Rosinante, I turned aside willingly into its peace.

It seemed I had entered a new earth.  The lane above had wandered on in the gloaming of its hedges and over-arching trees.  Here, all the clouds of sunset stood, caught up in burning gold.  Even as I paused, dazzled a moment by the sudden radiance, from height to height the wild bright rose of evening ran.  Not a tottering stone, black, well-nigh shapeless with age, not a green bush, but seemed to dwell unconsumed in its own fire above this desolate ground.  The trees that grew around me—­willow and yew, thorn and poplar—­were but flaming cages for the wild birds that perched in their branches.

Above these sound-dulled mansions trod lightly, as if of thought, Rosinante’s gilded shoes.  I wandered on in a strange elation of mind, filled with a desperate desire ever to remember how flamed this rose between earth and sky, how throbbed this jargon of delight.  And turning as if in hope to share my enthusiasm, a childish peal of laughter showed me I was not alone.

Beneath a canopy of holly branches and yew two children sat playing.  The nearer child’s hair was golden, glistening round his face of roses, and he it was who had laughed, tumbling on the sward.  But the face of the further child was white almost as crystal, and the dark hair that encircled his head with its curved lines seemed as it were the shadow of the gold it showed beside.  These children, it was plain, had been running and playing across the tombs; but now they were stooping together at some earnest sport.  To me, even if they had seen me, they as yet paid no heed.

I passed slowly towards them, deeming them at first of solitude’s creation, my eyes dazzled so with the sun.  But as I approached, so the branches beneath which they played gradually disparted, and I saw not far distant from them one sitting who evidently had these jocund boys in charge.

I could not but hesitate awhile as I surveyed them.  These were no mortal children playing naked amid the rose of evening:  nor she who sat veiled and beautiful beneath the ruinous tombs.  I turned with sudden dismay to depart from their presence unobserved as I had entered; but the children had now espied me, and came running, filled with wonder of Rosinante and the stranger beside her.