I knew it well; and, turning to one hand, walked sadly along the pavement.

Suddenly I saw approaching me, a little way off, a form well known to me (WELL-KNOWN!--alas, how weak the word!) in the years when I thought my boyhood was left behind, and shortly before I entered the realm of Fairy Land.

Wrong and Sorrow had gone together, hand-in-hand as it is well they do.
Unchangeably dear was that face.

It lay in my heart as a child lies in its own white bed; but I could not meet her.
"Anything but that," I said, and, turning aside, sprang up the steps to a door, on which I fancied I saw the mystic sign.

I entered--not the mysterious cottage, but her home.