Far too rapidly for description they changed their protean dress, moving faster and faster, glowing fiercely one minute and fading away the next, passing swiftly into new and dazzling brilliancies as the distant winds came to join them, and at length rushing upwards in one huge central draught through the trees, shouting their song with a roar like the sea.
Suddenly they swept up into the sky—sound, colour and all—and silence once more descended upon the forest. The winds were off and about their business of the day. The woods were empty. And the sun was at the very edge of the world.
'Watch the tops of the trees now,' cried Nixie, still trembling from the strange wonder of the scene. 'The Little Winds will wake the moment the sun touches them—the little winds in the tops of the trees.'
As she spoke, the sun came up and his first rays touched the pointed crests above them with gold; and Paul noticed that there were thousands of tiny, slender ribbons streaming out like elastic threads from the tips of all the pines, and that these had only just begun to move. As at a word of command they trooped out to meet the sunshine, undulating like wee coloured serpents, and uttering their weird and gentle music at the same time. And Paul, as he listened, understood at last why the wind in the tree-tops is always more delicately sweet than any other kind, and why it touches so poignantly the heart of him who hears, and calls wonder from her deepest lair.
'The young winds, you see,' Nixie said, peering up beneath her joined hands and finding it difficult to keep her balance as she did so. 'They sleep longer than the others. And they're not loose either; they're fastened on, and can only go out and come back.'
And, as he watched, he saw these young winds fly out miles into the brightening sky, making lines of flashing colour, and then tear back with a whirring rush of music to curl up again round the twigs and pine needles.
'Though sometimes they do manage to get loose, and make funny storms and hurricanes and things that no one expects at all in the sky.'
Paul was on the point of replying to this explanation when something struck against his legs, and he only just saved himself from falling by seizing Nixie and risking a flying leap with her from the log. 'It's that wicked Japan again,' she laughed, clambering back on to the tree.
The puppy was vigorously chasing its own tail, bumping as it did so into everything within reach. Paul stooped to catch it. At the same instant it rose up past his very nose, and floated off through the trees and was lost to view in the sky.
Nixie laughed merrily. 'It woke in the middle of its silly little dream,' she said. 'It was only half-asleep really, and playing. It won't come back now.'
'All puppies are absurd like that '
But he did not finish his profound observation about puppies, for his voice at that moment was drowned in a new and terrible noise that seemed to come from the heart of the wood. It happened just as in a children's fairy tale. It bore no resemblance to the roar the winds made; there was no music in it; it was crude in quality—angry; a sound from another place.
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 '
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 wonderful indeed 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 Burdens 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