Disappointed, but still hopeful, Drayton led the way, eagerly followed by his friend. The sun had sunk till it glowed like the half of a great, round, red lantern above the horizon's rim. Drayton was wondering what they should do if they failed to revive Viola before night came on; but this anxiety was wasted.
As they crossed the grass-grown court a little figure in blue dashed suddenly from behind a shattered column and flung itself bodily into the arms of Trenmore.
"Terry-oh, Terry, my dear!"
"Little Viola! There, there now. Is it crying you are? And for what?"
"Just for joy, Terry, dear. Don't mind me. There, I'll not cry any more. I waked up-all alone-in the shadow. And Terry, darling, I'd been dreaming that we both were dead!"
CHAPTER 5: THE WEAVER OF THE YEARS
WHEN the marvelous oversteps the bounds of known possibility there are three ways of meeting it. Trenmore and his sister, after a grave discussion of certain contingencies connected with the Catholic religion and a dismissal of them on grounds too utterly Celtic and dogmatic for Drayton to follow, took the first way. From that time on they faced every wonder as a fact by itself, to be accepted as such and let go at that.
Drayton, though all his life he had unconsciously so viewed such accustomed marvels as electricity or the phenomenon of his own life, could not here follow his Irish friends. He compromised on the second way, and accepted with a mental reservation, as "I see you now, but I am not at all sure that you are there or that I really believe in you!"
Fortunately there was not one of the three so lacking in mental elasticity as to discover the third way, which is madness.
"And what we should be thinking of," declared Viola presently, "is not how did we come here, but how are we to find our way home?"