It was a golden summer’s evening. In his little temperamental car he was chugging through the Quantock Hills. His car was temperamental chiefly because he had picked it up as a bargain second hand. In his wanderings of the last month he had established a friendship with it which was almost human, as a man does with a piece of machinery when he is lonely.

When the tour had first been planned it had included Ruddy; but at the last moment Ruddy had joined a pierrot-troupe, leaving Teddy to set off by himself. That vacant place at his side reproached him; a two-seater is so obviously meant for two persons. He had told himself faery-tales about how he might fill it. Sometimes he had invented a companion for himself—a girl with gray eyes and bronze-black hair. She seemed especially real to him when night had fallen and the timid shadows of lovers pressed back into the hedges as his lamps discovered them on the road ahead.

For the past month his mind had been ablaze with an uplifted sense of beauty. He had come down from London by lazy stages, halting here a day and there a day to sketch. Every mile of the way the air had been summer-freighted; the freedom of it had got into his blood. Everywhere that he had gone he had encountered new surprises—gray cathedral cities, sleepy villages, the blue sea of Devon; places and things of which he had only heard, and others which he hadn’t known existed. Dreams were materializing and stepping out to meet him. Eden Row, with its recluse atmosphere, was ceasing to be all his world. His emotions gathered themselves up into an urgent longing—to be young, to live intensely, to miss nothing.

To-day he had crossed Exmoor, black with peat and purple with heather, and was proposing to spend the night at Nether Stowey. He had chosen Nether Stowey because Coleridge had lived there. He had sent word to his mother that it was one of the points to which letters could be forwarded. When he had written his name in the hotel book, the proprietress looked up. “Oh, so you’re the gentleman!”

“Why? Have you got such stacks of letters for me?”

“No. A telegram.”

He tore it open and read, “However late, push on to-night to The Pilgrims? Inn, Glastonbury.” The signature was “Madame Josephine.”

He looked to see at what time it had been received. It had arrived at three o’clock; so it had been waiting for him five hours.

“I’m sorry I shan’t need that room,” he said. “How far is it to Glastonbury?”

“About twenty-three miles. I suppose you’ll stay to dinner, sir? It’s being served.”

“I’m afraid not.”

Without loss of time, he cranked up his engine, jumped into his car and started.

“However late, push on to-night to Glastonbury.” Why on earth? What interest could Madame Josephine have in his going to Glastonbury, and why to-night so especially? He had planned to go there to-morrow—to make a dream-day of it, full of memories of King Arthur and reconstructions of chivalrous history and legend. He had intended reading The Idyls of the King that evening to key himself up to the proper pitch of enthusiasm. It seemed entirely too modern and not quite decent, to go racing at the bidding of an unexplained telegram into “The Island Valley of Avilion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow.”

As he hummed along through the green-gold country he gave himself up to the mood of enchantment. In the transforming light of the fading sunset it seemed certain that a bend in the road would bring to view champions of The Round Table riding together.

He smiled and shook his head at himself; he hadn’t grown much older since those old days at Ware. It was this sight that he and Desire had expected—the sight of knights in clanking armor and ladies with flowing raiment, sauntering together in a magic world. It had seemed to them that the enraptured land which their hearts-imagined, must lie just a little further beyond the hills and hedges. To find it, it was only necessary to go on and on.

He recalled how he had read to her those legends as they had lain side by side, hidden in tall meadow-grasses from Fanner Joseph. He remembered how they had quarreled when she had said, “I like Sir Launcelot best.”

“But you mustn’t. King Arthur was the good one. If Sir Launcelot hadn’t done wrong, everything would have been happy always.”

“Yes, but if everything had been happy always, there wouldn’t have been any story, Teddy. I know why you don’t like my loving Sir Launcelot: it’s because you’re a King Arthur yourself.”

He laughed. How hurt he had felt at her accusation that he was a proper person!

And there was another memory: how, after playing at knights and ladies, she had tried to make him declare that she was beautiful. “Do you think I’m beautiful, Teddy?” And he, intent on keeping her vanity hungry, “You have beautiful hands.”

He had always promised himself that some day, if they ever met, one of the first places they would visit should be Glastonbury. It would add a last chapter to those chivalrous games which they had played together as children.

Far away in the orchard valley lights were springing up. Out of the misty distance came the lowing of cattle. Like a cowled monk, with peaceful melancholy, the gloaming crept across the meadows.

As he approached the town, it came as something of a shock to notice that its outskirts bore signs of newness. But as he drove into the heart of it, medieval buildings loomed up: gray, night-shrouded towers; stooping houses with leaded windows; the dusky fragrance of ivy, and narrow lanes which turned off into the darkness abruptly. Somewhere in the shadows was Chalice Hill, where the cup of the Last Supper lay buried. Not far distant, within the Abbey walls, the coffin of King Arthur was said to have been found. His imagination thrilled to the antiquity of the legend.

With reluctance he swung his mind back to the present. Pulling up outside The Pilgrims’ Inn, he left his car and entered.

“If you please, has any one been inquiring for me? My name’s Gurney.”

The landlady inspected him through the office-window. She was a kind-faced, motherly woman; the result of her inspection pleased her. She laid down her pen.

“Gurney! No. Not that I remember.”

“Puzzling!” He took her into his confidence, handing her the telegram. “I received that at Nether Stowey. I was going to have stayed there, and should have come on here to-morrow. But you see what it says, ’However late, push on to-night to The Pilgrims’ Inn, Glastonbury.’ So—so I pushed on.” He laughed.

“This Madame Josephine who signs it,” the landlady was turning the telegram over, “d’you know her?”

“Oh, yes. I know her.”

“I asked because—— Well, ladies do play jokes cm gentlemen. And we’ve a lot of actor-folk in Glastonbury at present—larky kind of people. I don’t take much stock in them myself. Shouldn’t think you did by the look of you.”

“I don’t.”

The landlady put her elbows on the desk and crouched her face in her hands. “I didn’t think you would. These people, they’ve been here a week for the Arthurian pageant Some of them stay with me; I’ve seen all I want of ’em. Too free in their manners, that’s what I say. It don’t seem right for girls and men to be so friendly. I wasn’t brought up that way. It puts false notions into girls’ heads, that’s what I say. I suppose you’ve dined already?”

“I haven’t. I hope it won’t put you to too much trouble.”

She led the way through the low-ceilinged hostel, explaining its history as she went. How in the middle-ages it had been the guest-house of the Abbey and the pilgrims had stayed there at the Abbot’s expense. How they had two haunted rooms upstairs, in one of which Anne Boleyn had slept. How the walls were tunneled with secret stairways which led down to subterranean passages. When the meal had been spread she left him, promising to let him know if there were any inquiries.

Odd! All through dinner he kept thinking about it. To have found out where to reach him Madame Josephine must have inconvenienced herself. Probably she’d had to send to Orchid Lodge, and Orchid Lodge had had to send to his mother. She wouldn’t have done all that unless her reason had been important.

He went down to the office. “Has any one called yet?”

“Not yet.”

He glanced at the clock; it was ten. Nobody would come now. He walked out into the High Street to garage his car and to take a stroll before turning in to bed.

The town lay silent. Here and there a faint light, ............