It was really incalculable the effect of enchantment this little yellow-haired girl cast upon him—hard to believe, hard to realise. So true, so exquisite was it, however, that he almost came to forget her age, and that she was actually but a child. To him she seemed more and more an intimate companion of the soul who had existed always, and that both he and she were ageless. It was their souls that played, talked, caressed, not merely their minds or bodies. In her flower-like little figure dwelt assuredly an old and ripened soul; one, too, it seemed to him sometimes, that hardly belonged to this world at all. There was that about their relationship which made it eternal—it always had been somewhere, it always would be—somewhere. No confinings of flesh, no limitations of mind and sense, no conditions of mere time and space, could lay their burden upon it for long. It belonged most sweetly to the real things which are conditionless. Moreover, one of the chief effects of the world of Faery, experts say, is that Time is done away with; emotions are inexhaustible and last for ever, continually renewing themselves; the Fairies dance for years instead of only for a night; their minds and bodies grow not old; their desires, and the objects of their desires, pass not away. ‘So, unquestionably,’ said Paul to himself from time to time as he reflected upon the situation, ‘I am bewitched. I must see what there is that I can do in the matter to protect myself from further depredations!’ Yet all he did immediately, so far as can be ascertained among the sources of this veracious history, was to collect the ‘Aventures’ already written and journey with them one fine day to London, where he had an interview of some length with a publisher—Dick’s publisher. The result, at any rate, was—the records prove it—that some time afterwards he received a letter in which it was plainly stated that ‘the success of such a book is hard to predict, but it has qualities, both literary and imaginative, which entitle it to a hearing’; and thus that in due course the said ‘Adventures of a Prisoner in Fairyland’ appeared upon the book-stalls. For the publishers, being the foremost in the land, took the high view that seemed almost independent of mercenary calculations; and it is interesting to note that the years justified their judgment, and that the ‘Adventures’ may now be found upon the table of every house in England where there dwells a true child, be that child seven or seventy. And any profits that Paul collected from the sale went, not into his own pocket, but were put aside, as the sequel shall show, for a secret purpose that lay hidden at this particular stage of the story among the very roots of his heart and being. The summer, meanwhile, passed quickly away, and August melted into September, finding him still undecided about his return to America.