"You think of everything, Ned," she replied gaily. "I never knew any one like you."
Except Guy Fawkes, or some arch traitor of that sort, he felt with a pang; but one had to take precautions, and if you set yourself up as a Deus ex machine to get people out of a muddle--why, some mud was likely to stick.
So, disguised out of all recognition, they swept through the village of Dinas, and, passing the staring schoolhouse, took the turn towards Cwmfaernog.
The villagers looked after them with slack curiosity, for Dinas was, as it had always been, immersed in its own trivialities. The revival had passed away, leaving its traces physical and mental no doubt, but ceasing to bring any new interest into life. At the present moment, however, the village had an absorbing interest of its own; for in two days time the Reverend Hwfa Williams was to marry Alicia Edwards, and all the other young women in the place were in that curious state of mingled spitefulness and vicarious nervous excitability which a wedding so often provokes in the feminine sex.
"They will not find any one at Cwmfaernog, whatever," said Isaac Edwards at his door, "for Martha Bate and her husband went for a jaunt the day before yesterday. It is only old Evans from the shepherd's hut that is to milk the cows and feed the cocks."
Meanwhile the motor sped on, curving round the rocks.
"There is no more slate here, anyhow," cried Aura joyfully, tearing off her veil. "Oh Ned! look, look! The floor of heaven? Ah! do stop and let us look."
He did not answer. The engine slowed, quivered, sunk to silence. Now, at last, he understood. Now he knew what he had seen in the boat so long ago, when the swift southern storm was sweeping up unseen behind him. This was the blue mist which had enveloped him and held him. A blue mist hiding the earth, hiding even every green thing from sight as it lay in wreaths in the hollows or crept up and up and up, leaving itself in clouds to cover all things until it met the sky.
The floor of heaven indeed!
Not quite so blue perhaps as that distant roof of heaven over which the heat of the day had spread a faintly violet haze; but still--the floor of heaven!