‘If only the chaps at school could see me now!’ he said to himself proudly.
And by this time it was gray dawn.
‘Lie down now,’ said Blue Mantle, ‘lie [p90 down, O Beloved of the Gods, upon the altar stone, for the last time.’
‘I shall be able to go, then?’ Quentin asked. This accidental magic was, he perceived, a tricky thing, and he wanted to be sure.
‘You will not be able to stay,’ said the priest. ‘If going is what you desire, the desire of the Chosen of the Gods is fully granted.’
The grass on the plain far and near rustled with the tread of many feet; the cold air of dawn thrilled to the awed murmured of many voices.
Quentin lay down, with his pink wreaths and his white robe, and watched the quickening pinkiness of the East. And slowly the great circle of the temple filled with white-robed folk, all carrying in their hands the faint pinkiness of the flowers which we nowadays call London Pride.
And all eyes were fixed on the arch through which, at sunrise on Midsummer Day, the sun’s first beam should fall upon the white, new, clean altar stone. The stone is still there, after all these thousands of years, and at sunrise on Midsummer Day the sun’s first ray still falls on it.
