dignified evolutions, displaying all its treasures to him; mountains bowed and clouds curtseyed, and Eastern cities came drifting into view, and ships and islands; and there were palaces and the gardens of philosophers, sea beaches whereon maidens sang and mermaids combed their hair; and there were great staircases up and down which moved stately personages in silence, so that it was clear there was some great ceremony toward, but before he could discover the meaning of it all the world moved on and displayed another aspect of its seemingly endless variety. And he was sated with it and asked for it to stop, and at last with a mighty effort he became more its creator than its creature, and, as though he had just remembered the Open Sesame, it stayed in its course. It stayed, and in a narrow, dark street, with one flickering light in it, and the brilliant light of a great boulevard at the end of it, he saw an old white-bearded man with a pack on his back and a staff in his hand. And the old man knew that he was there, and he beckoned to him to come into the street. So he went and followed him, and without a word they turned through a little dark gateway and across up a courtyard and up into a garret, and the old man gave him a sack to sit on and lifted his packet from his back and out of it built up a little open box, and hung a curtain before it. Old Mole settled on his sack and opened his lips to speak to the old man, but he had disappeared. The curtain rose. III INTERLUDE _I may have lost my judgment and my wits, but I must confess I liked that play. There was something in it._ THE SEAGULL III INTERLUDE _Go now, go into the land Where the mind is free and the heart Blooms, and the fairy band Airily troops to the dusty mart; And the chatter and money-changing Die away. In fancy ranging, Let all the inmost honey of the world Sweeten thy faith, to see unfurl'd Love's glory shown in every little part Of life; and, seeing, understand._ BY a roadside, at the end of a village, beneath the effigy of a god, sat a lean, brown old man. He had no covering for his head and the skin of the soles of his feet was thickened and scarred. In front of him were two little boxes, and on his knees there lay open a great book from which he was reading aloud in an unknown tongue.