perhaps. Not only is the invisible made visible to the girl and boy seeing as the tramp sees, but the, until then at least, partly visible—the brook, the trees, the very stones and the elder bush—are seen to have more life than could be suspected. And all colours are changed, too. The boy and girl are seeing things in a new spectrum.

Finally the three get down from the fence and wander about in this Fairyland that has always been here truly but is only now seen. The book is their day in the meadow. And when you have turned the last page you do not remember it as a book. You remember it as a day in Fairyland or Paradise—or as a day on which you saw things clear. And you never doubt for a minute that the author himself is one who has certainly seen like that. Perhaps he only saw it in a flash, but he did see for himself and with his own eyes.

In the end the boy and girl return to the fence and the tramp departs on the way they had pointed out to him. But as he goes, he turns about when he gets to the elder bush and they realize in that last glance from his eyes that he is the King of the Fairies. Then as he turns again and walks on, as long as he is in their sight, he is simply a common tramp.

But their quarrel has dropped for ever dead between them. A boy and a girl who have actually walked in Fairyland together and seen things clear have nothing to quarrel about, and so long as they both shall live can have nothing to quarrel about again.

And though they had surely seen things clear for a whole day in the meadow—the sun had risen to the meridian and gone down into the west while they wandered—now when they look at each other there is no indication that a minute has passed. The sun is where it was at the height of their quarrel! And so it appears that the tramp’s arrival and stay and departure and their whole day in the meadow was squeezed into perhaps one straight meeting of their eyes as they quarrelled.

But they do not spend themselves in wonder. This boy and girl are Wisdom’s own children, in spite of the momentary silliness that had plunged them head-first into the darkness of an enmity; they accept the gods’ gifts. And for a boy and a girl who have spent a day in Fairyland together, or for that matter only spent a minute there together, the gods’ gift is marriage.

Katherine, when she had finished the book, had said that it was the most perfect love story she had ever read; she wished she were rich enough to give it to all the lovers she knew. And she said, too, 

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