She reached the top at last, too hot from walking to flinch at the shock of the wind, or to notice that the sun had gone in: and found her goal again—twin towers and arched body—yet so strangely altered in an afternoon, that, as she looked, she gave a cry of dismay. It had been so near, so clear, a parrot’s flight from Beech Hill, but now, withdrawn to an immense distance, it rose without a glitter from the iron rim of the world, a grey, frozen blur upon the sullen sky.
She stared fearfully.
She couldn’t ... she hadn’t ... she couldn’t have made a mistake?... Yet what had happened?... What in the name of enchantment had happened to the Crystal Palace, the Cœlestial City, the bright and shining heaven?...
Enchantment! In a flash her scared wits seized at the only endurable explanation. Enchantment! Of course! Of course! Oh, blessedly of course! What was she thinking of so soon to forget Christian, and her Shepherds?...
Beware that ye steppe.... How they had rubbed it in too! And she hadn’t come to a single danger yet except motor-cars and the cow with the leering eye; did she suppose she was to win through without a qualm? Foolish Laura, to forget that between Delectable Mountains and the Gates of the City lies, with all its bewilderments, the Enchanted Ground.
The Enchanted Ground! Her eyes sought the far hills, and once more credulity was fortified into conviction, for even as she watched, the white autumn dusk uprose noiselessly, and before it city and hills alike shrank and were gone. It was as convincing a piece of magic as could be wanted.
Laura only wished Aunt Adela could have been there to see it—Aunt Adela, who did not believe in witches—Aunt Adela, always sniffing at Grimm’s Fairy Tales! Besides, even Aunt Adela would be—only for a moment—some sort of a companion, flesh and blood at least, at a small girl’s elbow, as she stands lonesomely on a strange hill-top, buttoning the reefer that had seemed so hot and thick down in the valley, pulling down cuffs of sleeves through which the wind is tunnelling, making shivering preparation for the plunge down—down—down—into Enchanted Ground.
Impossible to turn back now—wasn’t it?... What a notion?... Mother would be waiting.... Mother would know by now that she was coming.... One of the Shining Ones would be sure to have told her.... How excited Mother would be growing.... The Enchanted Ground stretched from sky to sky.... It was beginning to rain, and the wind cut through one’s reefer as if it were gauze.... But there was Mother.... She could get through somehow.... Only she must hurry, for it must be nearly tea-time.... She simply had to get to heaven by tea-time....
She shifted her autumn bunch, tucked her free hand between frock and skin to keep it as warm as might be, and, screwing up eyes and mouth against the drizzle that whipped her face, set off at a stumbling trot down her second hill-side in an afternoon.