Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/119

 and, more immediately, of two lackeys, much be-*powdered as to their heads, and stately in new liveries of blue-and-silver. Confusedly he noted these things, for the woman had paused in the bright doorway, and all the loveliness of Ettarre was visible now to him, and she had given a delighted cry of recognition.

"La, it is Horvendile! and we are having the same dream again!"

This much he heard and saw as her hand went out gladly toward him. Then as she touched him the universe seemed to fold about Felix Kennaston, just as a hand closes, and he was sitting at the writing-table in the library, with a gleaming scrap of metal before him.

He sat thus for a long while.

"I can make nothing of all this. I remember of course that I saw Muriel Allardyce stand very much like that, in the doorway of the Royal Hotel, at the Green Chalybeate—and how many years ago, good Lord! And equally of course the most plausible explanation is that I am losing my wits. Or, else, it may be that I am playing