"The world desires redemption," he said. "It is for you to gratify the world's desire."
XII
The mystery which steals out from the woods, creeps down from the hills, and lurks beneath the shadowed hedgerows at beckoning of dusk, was abroad and potent when Paul Mario that evening walked up Babylon Lane towards the Hall. Elemental forces, which the ancients clothed in semi-human shape and named and feared, moved beside him and breathed strange counsels in his ear. The storm had released uneasy spirits from their bondage in crannies of primeval hills, and it was on such a night as this that many a child has glimpsed the Folk tripping lightly around those fairy-rings which science would have us believe due to other causes than the mystic dance. The Pipes of Pan were calling, and up in the aisles of the hills moonbeams slyly sought and found bare-limbed dryads darting from the eagerness of wooing fauns. Progress has banished those Pandean spirits from the woodlands, but the moon is the mother of magic, and her children steal out, furtive, half fearful, when she raises her lamp as of old.
Between prescience and imagination the borderline is ill defined. Although Dovelands Cottage was seemingly sleeping, or deserted, Paul pictured Flamby standing by the stile beyond, where the orchard path began. And when, nearing it, he paused, looking to the right, there was she, a figure belonging to the elfin world of which he dreamed, and seemingly on the point of climbing over the stile.
"Flamby!" he cried.
She turned, descended, and came forward slowly, a wild-haired nymph; and that odd shyness which sat so ill upon her was manifest in her manner. She had expected Paul; had really been waiting for him—and she felt that he knew it.
"Were you dreaming in the twilight?" he asked, merrily.
Flamby stood a little apart from him, staring down at the dusty road. "No," she replied. "I was scared, so I came out."
"Scared? Of what?"
"Don't know. Just scared. Mother is over at Mrs. Fawkes', and it's not likely I was going with her."