loose-box. Elaine divested her habit of some remaining crumbs of
bun-loaf and jumped lightly on to her saddle. As she rode slowly
down the lane, with Keriway escorting her as far as its gate, she
looked round at what had seemed to her, a short while ago, just a
picturesque old farmstead, a place of bee-hives and hollyhocks and
gabled cart-sheds; now it was in her eyes a magic city, with an
undercurrent of reality beneath its magic.

"You are a person to be envied," she said to Keriway; "you have
created a fairyland, and you are living in it yourself."

"Envied?"

He shot the question out with sudden bitterness. She looked down
and saw the wistful misery that had come into his face.

"Once," he said to her, "in a German paper I read a short story
about a tame crippled crane that lived in the park of some small
town. I forget what happened in the story, but there was one line
that I shall always remember: 'it was lame, that is why it was
tame.'"

He had created a fairyland, but assuredly he was not living in it.



CHAPTER IX