'Excuse me, Mother, the cupboard's all in distress. I can't find the marmalade anywhere.' 'But it's already on the table, child.' She saw her Cousin and popped swiftly back again from view. One heard fragments of her sentences--'wumbled ... chronic ... busy monster. ... 'And two minutes later _la famille anglaise_ was seriously at tea. CHAPTER XVIII What art thou, then? I cannot guess; But tho' I seem in star and flower To feel thee some diffusive power, I do not therefore love thee less. _Love and Death,_ TENNYSON. In the act of waking up on the morning of the Star Cave experience, Henry Rogers caught the face of a vivid dream close against his own-- but in rapid motion, already passing. He tried to seize it. There was a happy, delightful atmosphere about it. Examination, however, was impossible; the effort to recover the haunting dream dispersed it. He saw the tip, like an express train flying round a corner; it flashed and disappeared, fading into dimness. Only the delightful atmosphere remained and the sense that he had been somewhere far away in very happy conditions. People he knew quite well, had been there with him; Jimbo and Monkey; Daddy too, as he had known him in his boyhood. More than this was mere vague surmise; he could not recover details. Others had been also of the merry company, familiar yet unrecognisable. Who in the world were they? It all seemed oddly real. 'How I do dream in this place, to be sure,' he thought; 'I, who normally dream so little! It was like a scene of my childhood-- Crayfield or somewhere.' And he reflected how easily one might be persuaded that the spirit escaped in sleep and knew another order of experience. The sense of actuality was so vivid. He lay half dozing for a little longer, hoping to recover the adventures. The flying train showed itself once or twice again, but smaller, and much, much farther away. It curved off into the distance. A deep cutting quickly swallowed it. It emerged for the last time, tiny as a snake upon a chess-board of far-off fields. Then it dipped into mist; the snake shot into its hole. It was gone. He sighed. It had been so lovely. Why must it vanish so entirely? Once or twice during the day it returned, touched him swiftly on the heart and was gone again. But the waking impression of a dream is never the dream itself. Sunshine destroys the sense of enormous wonder. 'I believe I've been dreaming all night long, and going through all kinds of wild adventures.'