Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/126

 affairs lay far beneath him; that Ettarre belonged to him; and, most vividly of all, that the exultance which possessed him was a by-product of an unstable dream.

"Yet it is not any city of to-day," he was saying. "Look, how yonder little rascal glitters—he is wearing a helmet of some sort and a gorget. Why, all those pigmies, if you look closely, go in far braver scarlets and purples than we elect to skulk about in nowadays; and there is not an office-building or an electric-light advertisement of chewing-gum in sight. No, that hotchpotch of huddled gables and parapets and towers shaped like lanterns was stolen straight out of some Doré illustration for Rabelais or Les Contes Drolatiques. But it does not matter at all, and it will never matter, where we may chance to be, Ettarre. What really and greatly matters, is that when I try to touch you everything vanishes."

The girl was frankly puzzled. "Yes, that seems a part of the sigil's magic"