Shepherd or god, I liked him after that. I took a bit of the mandrake from him and asked him whether he had ever tried it and what he had seen; but at this he blushed so furiously that as we moved away Pelleas hastened to set him at his ease by some crisp commonplace about the night. And there we left him, standing under the birch with his mandrake in his hand, looking down, I instantly guessed, for some one in that brightness below us in the hollow.
“Pelleas,” I said, “Pelleas, without any doubt there is somebody down there whom he wants to see. I dare say the temple may not be enchanted, after all. For that fine young fellow and his blushes—they seemed to me very human!”
“That’s the reason,” Pelleas said most wisely, “why there is likely to be some enchantment about. The more human you are the more wonderful things are likely to happen.”
That is true enough, and it was in very human fashion that next instant the figure in pink in the portico of the temple came swiftly toward us and took me in her arms. It was Avis, all tender regret for what she fancied to be her inhospitality and as perfectly the hostess as if it were usual for her to receive her guests in a white temple. And manifestly it was usual; for when she had led us within, there on a papier maché rock on the edge of a papier maché ocean sat Hobart Eddy himself and Lawrence Knight in a dress as picturesque as Hobart’s; and about them in a confusion of painted idols and crowns and robes were all the house-party at Little Rosemont and a score from the countryside.
“Upon my word,” Pelleas said, “they must have let us off at Arcady at last. I always knew I’d buy a through ticket some day.”
Hobart Eddy came forward, twitching an amazing shepherd’s cloak about him, and shook his shepherd’s crook at us.
“I’m head goat,” he explained, “but they let me call myself a goatherd because they think I won’t see through the offence.”
Then Avis, laughing, drew Pelleas and me away to tell us how at last her dream had come true and that the white temple was the theater which she had wanted for her guests at Little Rosemont, and that on Monday it was to be opened with some tableaux and an open-air play on the grass-plot, under the moon. And when she had shown us all the charms and wonders of the pretty place she led us away for our drive across the fields to the house.
As we emerged on the wide portico Pelleas stopped us with a gesture.
“Look,” he said softly, “look there. Really, you know, it’s like being somewhere else.”