No man could do it. He and his cousin were mere
'supers' on this stage. His cousin would invent her for his story. He
would make her come. His passion would create her. That was what he
meant.
Rogers smiled to himself, moving away from the window where the
sunshine grew too fierce for comfort. What a funny business it all
was, to be sure! And how curiously every one's thinking had
intermingled! The children had somehow divined his own imaginings in
that Crayfield garden; their father had stolen the lot for his story.
It was most extraordinary. And then he remembered Minks, and all his
lunatic theories about thought and thought-pictures. The garden scene
at Crayfield came back vividly, the one at Charing Cross, in the
orchard, too, with the old Vicar, when they had talked beneath the
stars. Who among them all was the original sponsor? And which of them
had set the ball a-rolling? It was stranger than the story of
creation. ... It _was_ the story of creation.
Yet he did not puzzle very long. Actors in a play are never puzzled;
it is the bewildered audience who ask questions. And Henry Rogers was
on the stage. The gauzy curtain hung between him and the outside point
of view. He was already deeply involved in Fairyland. ... His feet
were in the Net of Stars. ... He was a prisoner.
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