"Can't she see," he cried, "that the little thing only makes me love her more? Don't she know how I felt the other night--when she let me help her that way? She must know. It's just an excuse--" He broke off and his hands dropped. "Then there's her other reason," he said, "I guess you know that. I can't blame her for it. But even with that, it kind of seems as if,--if she loved me--" "Yes," I said, "Peter, it does seem so." And yet in my heart I am certain that the reason is not at all that Miggy cannot love him--I remember the woman-softening of her face that forenoon when she found the spirit of the old romances in the village. I am not even certain that the reason is that she does not love Peter now--I remember how tender and feminine she was the other night with Peter and Little Child. I think it is only that the cheap cynicism of the village--which nobody means even when it is said!--has taught her badly; and that Life has not yet touched her hand, has not commanded "Look at me," has not bidden her follow with us all. I looked into the bright bowl of the night which is alternately with one and against one in one's mood of emprise; the bright bowl of the night inverted as if some mighty genii were shaking the stars about like tea-leaves to fortune the future. What a pastime _that_ for a wizard! "Oh, Peter," I said, "_if_ one were a wizard!" "I didn't understand," said Peter. "How pleasant it would be to make folk love folk," I put it. He understood that. "Wouldn't it, though?" he assented wistfully. So does everybody understand. Wouldn't it, though! Oh, _don't you wish you could_? In the silence which fell I kept on looking at those starry tea-leaves until I protest that a thought awoke in my mind as if it wanted to be somebody. Be Somebody. It was as if it came alive, quite without my will, so that almost I could see it. It was a friend conferring in my head. Perhaps it was the Custodian herself, come outside to that white porch of the moon. "Peter," I said, "I think I'm going to tell you a story." For I longed to make him patient with Miggy, as men, who understand these things first, are not always patient with women, who often and often understand too late. He listened to the story as I am setting it down here--the story of the New Village. But in it I could say nothing of how, besides by these things celestial, cosmic, I was touched by the simple, human entreaty of the big, baffled man and that about his hands and the way his hair sticks up at the back. XVI THE NEW VILLAGE Once upon a time there was a village which might have been called The-Way-Certain-Folk-Want-It-Now. That, however, was not its name--it had a proper, map-sounding name. And there every one went to and fro with a fervour and nimbleness which proved him to be skilfully intent upon his own welfare.