Jane: Her wishes came true, I know, both by the pool and by the ferry; but that the pool and the ferry were supernatural remains unproved. Because in both cases her wishes were brought about by a man. And if there was any other magician at all, you never showed him to us. Martin: Dear Mistress Jane, where were your eyes? I showed you the greatest of all the magicians that give ear to the wishes of women; and when it is necessary to bring them about, he puts his power on a man and the man makes them come true. Which is a magic you must often have noticed in men, though you may never have known the magician's name. Joscelyn: We have never noticed any magic whatever in men. And we don't want to know the magician's name. We don't believe in anything so silly as magic. Martin: I hope, Mistress Joscelyn, there were moments in my story not too silly to be believed in. Joscelyn: Silliness in stories is more or less excusable, since they are not even supposed to be believed. And is there still a Wishing-Pool on Rewell and a ferry at Bury? Martin: The ferry is there, but Harding's hammer is silent. And where his shop stood is a little cottage where children live, who dabble in summer on the ferry-step. And their mother will run from her washing or cooking to take you over the water for the same fee that Wayland asked for shoeing a poor man's donkey or making a rich man's sword. And this is the only miracle men call for from those banks to-day; and if ever you tried to take a boat across the Bury currents, you would not only believe in miracles but pray for one, while your boat turned in mid-stream like a merry-go-round. So there's no doubt that the ferry-wife is a witch. But as for the Wishing-Pool, it is as lost as it was before the white hart led two lovers to discover it at separate times, and having brought them together passed with them and its secret out of men's knowledge. For neither it nor Harding nor Rosalind was seen again in Sussex after that day. And yet I can tell you this much of their fortunes: that whatever befell them wherever they wandered, he was a king and she a queen in the sight of the whole world, which to all lovers consists of one woman and one man; and their lives were crowned lives, and they carried their crown with them even when they came in the same hour to exchange one life for another. But this was only a long and cloudless reign on earth. Jane: Well, it is a satisfaction to know that. For at certain times your story seemed so overshadowed with clouds that I was filled with doubts. Joan: Oh, but Jane! even when we walk in the thickest clouds on the Downs, we are certain that presently some light will melt them, or some wind blow them away. Joyce: Yes, it never once occurred to me to doubt the end of the story. Jennifer: Nor to me. And so the clouds only kept one in a delicious palpitation, at which one could secretly smile, without having to stop trembling.