“Do you think he’ll come?” she asked for the twentieth time. “It’s raining so horribly that perhaps he won’t.” (He always meant Mr. Sheston nowadays).
“Oh, I expect he’ll drive up in his car soon,” said Rachel. “It’s seven days since last time, and I’ve never yet missed seeing him on the seventh day. Somehow or other I’m sure we shall have an adventure. Only you never know beforehand how it’s going to happen. And it generally happens quite suddenly, and just when you don’t expect it.”
The afternoon wore on, tea-time came. Still no Mr. Sheston, and at last, when it was almost dark, Diana was obliged to go.
She was almost tearful as she said good-bye.
“It’s so awfully disappointing,” she wailed. “Perhaps it’s all over—all the magic, you know, and we shall never see any lovely things again.”
Rachel was just as puzzled, but not quite so hopeless as Diana.
“Anyhow, even if the magic part is over, he can go on telling us stories,” she observed. “And his stories are splendid. That one about the Siege of Rhodes, you know. I tried to tell you, but I can’t do it properly. Perhaps he’ll tell you himself some time or other. I did think we should have had at least a story to-day,” she added, mournfully.
Rachel repeated this remark to herself as she lay in bed several hours later. The rain had ceased, and a full moon shone in a clear sky. She had pulled up her window blind, and the beautiful silvery light came pouring into the room and made her long more than ever for the magic which Diana feared was “all over.”
For a long time she lay with wide-open eyes staring out of the window at the radiant sky. And then, all at once—how was it? How could it be?—she found herself looking at something quite different.
What was that strange shape high up above her head?... Where was she? What had become of the bed in which a second ago she had been lying? How did it happen that she was standing upright, gazing about her, in what seemed a vast hall filled with moonlight and shadows and dim forms?