and perhaps it's better they should remain where they were originally
intended for. Are you fond of tapestry?"

"I've never seen any," said Austin, "but of course I've read about
it--Gobelin, Bayeux, and so on. I should love to see what it looks
like in reality."

"Come, then," said St Aubyn, crossing the lawn. "I have the key in my
pocket."

He flung open the door. Austin found himself in the vast apartment,
groined and vaulted, measuring about a hundred and twenty feet by
fifty, and lighted by exquisite pointed windows enriched with
coats-of-arms and other heraldic devices in jewel-like stained glass.
The walls were completely hidden by tapestries of rare beauty, woven
into the semblance of gardens, palaces, arcades and bowers of clipped
hedges and pleached trees with slender fountains set meetly in green
shade; while some again were crowded with swaying Gothic figures of
saints and kings and warriors and angels, all far too beautiful,
thought Austin, to have ever lived. Yet surely there must be some
prototypes of all these wonderful conceptions somewhere. There must be
a world--if we could only find it--where loveliness that we only know
as pictured exists in actual reality. What a dream-like hall it was,
on that still summer afternoon. Yet there was something uncanny about
it too. St Aubyn had stepped out of sight, and Austin left by himself
began to experience a very extraordinary sensation. He felt that he
was not alone. The immense chamber seemed _full of presences_. He
could see nothing, but he felt them all about him. The place was
thickly populated, but the population was invisible. Everything looked
as empty as it had looked when the door was first thrown open, and yet