Suddenly a ray of brilliant light—light that could never blind the eyes—shot straight across the path. Then came another, another, following thick and fast from every direction.
Swiftly the coal-black horses changed in the flooding light to purest white, visions of inexpressible and perfect beauty. Rosalie’s heart beat faster with sudden, unexpected joy. She looked up at the Master, her own face transfigured by the light, as so was his. For all the weariness, all the contempt, all the dark shadows, had vanished from his features, and left nothing but what was full of life, of vigour, and of kindliness. His eyes, still dark and deep, looked into hers, the first time on the long and perilous journey, and he said, laughing, as sometimes of old:
“Do you prefer looking at me to the magnificence of all this scenery?”
But she clasped his arm in both her hands, and leaned her forehead against his shoulder.
And suddenly he brought the horses to a check, and drawing her still closer, bent his head and kissed her cheek. Then she looked up with eyes all wet with tears, and bright with happiness, and drawing back a little, said:
“I never thought that things would come out this way. I—I never imagined that black horses could come out white—nor you become so altered.”
He laughed.
“It all depends upon the journey that I take. Sometimes I cross upon another rainbow, that leads us all down hill from Lucifram at almost break-neck speed. Then neither I nor these, my horses, alter much. But look, Rosalie, round about you. This is a scene worth seeing and remembering.”
He stood up, and giving her his hand, helped her to her feet.
And then she saw that streams of light and rainbow garlands were flung from a thousand spheres to meet this central road, itself a giant rainbow crossing from Lucifram (a tiny speck of gleaming red in the far, far distance) towards a country quite unsurpassed for loveliness. And all around, from the different worlds of light, came scenes of fairyland.