It came swiftly nearer and nearer, increasing in volume as it came. A veil seemed to spread suddenly over the scene; the trees grew shadowy and dim; the glades melted off into mistiness; and ever the mass of sound came pouring up towards them. Paul realised that the frontiers of consciousness were shifting again in a most extraordinary fashion, so that the whole forest slipped off into the background and became a dim map in his memory, faint and unreal—and, with it, went both Nixie and himself. The ground rose and fell under their feet. Her hand melted into something fluid and slippery as he tried to keep his hold upon it. The child whispered words he could not catch. Then, like the puppy, they both began to rise. The roar came out to meet them and enveloped them furiously in mid air. ‘At any rate, we’ve seen the wind!’ he heard the child’s voice murmuring in his beard. She rose away from him, being lighter, and vanished through the tops of the trees. And then the roar drowned him and swept him away in a whirling tempest, so that he lost all consciousness of self and forgot everything he had ever known.... The noise resolved itself gradually into the crunching sounds of the carriage wheels and the clatter of horses’ hoofs coming up the gravel drive. Paul looked about him with a sigh that was half a yawn. China and Japan were still romping on the lawn, Mrs. Tompkyns and Smoke were curled up in hot, soft circles precisely where they had been before, Toby and Jonah were still busily engaged doing ‘something with daisies’ in the full blaze of the sunshine, and Nixie lay beside him, all innocence and peace, still gazing through the tangle of her yellow hair at the slow-sailing clouds overhead. And the clouds, he noticed, had hardly altered a line of their shape and position since he saw them last. He turned with a jump of excitement. ‘Nixie,’ he exclaimed, ‘I’ve seen the wind!’ She rolled over lazily on her side and fixed her great blue eyes on his own, between two strands of her hair. From the expression of her brown face it was possible to surmise that she knew nothing—and everything. ‘Have you?’ she said very quietly. ‘I thought you might.’ ‘Yes, but did I dream it, or imagine it, or just think it and make it up?’ He still felt a little bewildered; the memory of that strangely beautiful picture-gallery still haunted him. Yonder, before the porch, the steaming horses and the smart coachman on the box, and his sister coming across the lawn from the carriage all belonged to another world, while he himself and Nixie and the other children still stayed with him, floating in a golden atmosphere where Wind was singing and alive. ‘That doesn’t matter a bit,’ she replied, peering at him gravely before she pulled her hair over both eyes. ‘The point is that it’s really true! Now,’ she added, her face completely hidden by the yellow web, ‘all you have to do is to write it for our next Meeting—write the record of your Aventure——’