The square-paned window, with its prospect of a road along which omnibuses, carts and cabs travelled, and people went to and fro, had vanished. They were looking into the open air. * * * * * A mist like a shimmering white veil obscured everything but the sky, which was intensely blue, and though the children strained their eyes, they could discern nothing beyond, except, perhaps, something that might, or might not, be trees. They were just vague shapes behind the soft wall of mist. “You shall see more than this in a moment.” Mr. Sheston’s voice was close to them, but as Rachel and Diana turned their heads to look at him they found that neither he nor anything within the room was visible. It was as though they sat in a darkened theatre looking out upon a stage. “And the curtain hasn’t gone up properly yet,” thought Rachel, full of tremulous anticipation. “I’ll tell you why the curtain hasn’t gone up yet,” Mr. Sheston’s voice continued, and Rachel gave a little jump of surprise—for she had not spoken her thought aloud. Oh, certainly, as Salome in Babylon had said, Sheshà was “the greatest of all magicians!” “You will understand presently how Diana’s temple at Ephesus began,” Mr. Sheston went on. “What I am going to tell you now is _legend_—that is to say, something that has been repeated from father to son for a great many years, always altered a little in the telling, so that though there may be, and probably is, some truth in the story, we can’t say how much is true and how much false. Well, the _legend_ part of the story, you see, is rather like the mist full of vague shapes which you’re looking at now. I’m going to _tell_ you the legend part—but, directly we come to what we really _know_, the curtain will go up.