‘And read it out?’ he said, beginning to understand. The yellow head nodded. He felt utterly and delightfully bewitched. ‘All right,’ he said; ‘I will.’ ‘And make it a very-wonderfulindeed Aventure,’ she added, springing to her feet. ‘Hush! Here’s mother!’ Paul rose dizzily to greet his sister, while the children ran off with their animals to other things. ‘You’ve had a pleasant afternoon, Paul, dear?’ she asked. ‘Oh, very nice indeed——’ His thoughts were still entangled with the wind and with the story he meant to write about it for the next Meeting. She opened her parasol and held it over her head. ‘Now, come indoors,’ he went on, collecting himself with an effort, ‘or into the shade. This heat is not good for you, Margaret.’ He looked at her pale, delicate face. ‘You’re tired too.’ ‘I enjoyed the drive,’ she replied, letting him take her arm and lead her towards the house. ‘I met the Burdons in their motor. They’re coming over to luncheon one day, they said. You’ll like _him_, I think.’ ‘That’s very nice,’ he remarked again, ‘very nice. Margaret,’ he exclaimed suddenly, ashamed of his utter want of interest in all she was planning for him, ‘I think you ought to have a motor too. I’m going to give you one.’ ‘That is sweet of you, Paul,’ she smiled at him. ‘But really, you know, one likes horses best. They’re much quieter. Motors do shake one so.’ ‘I don’t think that matters; the point is that it’s really true,’ he muttered to himself, thinking of Nixie’s judgment of his Aventure. His sister looked at him with her expression of faint amusement. ‘You mustn’t mind me,’ he laughed, planting her in a deck-chair by the shade of the house; ‘but the truth is, my mind is full just now of some work I’ve got to do—a report, in fact, I’ve got to write.’ He went off into the house, humming a song. She followed him with her eyes. ‘He is so strange. I do wish he would see more people and be a little more normal.’ And in Paul’s mind, as he raced along the passage to his private study in search of pen and paper, there ran a thought of very different kind in the shape of a sentence from the favourite of all his books: ‘Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.’ CHAPTER XI It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid. It may be contended, rather, that this (somewhat minor bard) in almost every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor.—R. L. S. Now that his first Aventure was an accomplished fact, and that he was writing it out for the Meeting, Paul carried about with him a kind of secret joy. At last he had found an audience, and an audience is unquestionably a very profound need of every human heart. Nixie was helping him to expression. ‘I’ll write them such an Aventure out of that Wind-Vision,’ he exclaimed, ‘that they’ll fairly shiver with delight. And if _they_ shiver, why shouldn’t all the children in the world shiver too?’