Where all the leaves are merry—”
cried Peripatetica joyously.
“Of course it’s Arcady,” said Jane, with conviction. “And we have come upon it in the Age—or perhaps the moment—of Gold. Gaspero,” she announced firmly, “we will lunch right here.”
“But Signorina—the Vista!” protested the Wizard with a quizzical smile.
It was really (Peripatetica is convinced) Gaspero’s subtle understanding of Jane’s character which led him to offer just sufficient opposition to fix her determination to stay at the very spot where he could best work his magic, for a flowing world of shadowy purple swam about them in a thousand suave folds down to a shining sea, and he could not have showed them any vista more beautiful. But why attempt to shake Jane’s pleased conviction it was really owing to her that for a few hours she and Peripatetica could truly say, “I too have lived in Arcadia.” That it was owing to her they cheerfully fed there, and lay cradled for long warm hours in that perfumed flood of flowers in happy thoughtless silence, wrapped in a fold of the Earth Mother’s—the great Demeter’s—mantle; a fold embroidered by the fine fingers of her daughter Persephone, the Opener of Flowers.
That night, when the full moon rose over the silky sea, far down the horizon behind them slowly faded into the distance the ghostly silver peaks of the enchanted Land of the Older Gods.
THE END