A great shout went up.
"June, June, June!"
That was the moment of her triumph. It was the moment of her madness too.
The touch of the mystic rim quickened her indefinite aspirations and sharpened her sadness. She would go! Not Oberon and all his fairies should prevent her. The crown--charged with mighty powers--gave her strange new determination and an influence more potent far than she had ever possessed before. That town-world might be hopeless, but she would not say so till she herself was convinced of it. She would go to London.
Oberon, watching her face, was aware of this fleeting debate in her mind and the disobedient decision. He is the gentlest knight in Fairyland, and for June, who deserved so well of everyone, had an especial reverence and affection. That she should disobey his public command would be almost as hurtful to his pride as allowing a dragon, pent in its subterranean prison, to escape.
"June," he said to her gently, "you will go back to your home in the Land of Wild Roses. A hundred of the fairest knights will guard you and the crown--your precious burden. You will go at once. The revels are ended."
Daylight filled the sky. The moon was a pallid shadow of her former self; the stars had become invisible. The birds, self-centred, were flying hither and thither, bustling about for the wherewithal to live and to help live. One by one the flowers put out their ineffectual lamps.
Ordinarily, the fairies would have decamped forthwith; the gnomes in weary, grumbling, clumsily-clambering pell-mell, every one of them with the fear at his elbow that he might be chosen for some fatigue duty--as our straight-backed friends of the scarlet tunic expressively call it. But on this occasion they stayed. Not an elf stirred. Everyone stared and wondered.
"Was June in disgrace?" they asked of each other, "and if so, why?"
The questions were answered by further questions. There was a jostling of inquiries without any progress made. Rumours rioted. It had been a night indeed!