Evening star., 1932-01-24

can give my clients something far more
acceptable than the truth about their
future So these passing seizures OF
veracity do not really inJure my sooth-
saying"
The matters thus far recorded are
known. To many persons it is not known
that in the Spring of the year, upon the
last night in April gray Thomas Lear
mont went by moonlight to place where
three roads met. The one road passed
among briars, and lilies grew thiekly
about the second road, but the third
read was bordered by the dim green of
many ferns. It was in this place that
Thomas Learmont thought about his
severance from the thin, dark girl and
about the noble times when he had
thrived as a king in Faery.
He sighed as he waited there in the
moonlight of April. He saw the little
white shapes which scuttered and flick
cred along the briery road, and he saw
the little yellow shapes which capered
like pale flames in the road that went
among the lilies, as one by one these
shapes Jared out of the world wherein
mortal beings rule and order matters. In
the road which was bordered by ferns
the moonlight lay unbroken by anything
except the wavering shadows of one tree;
not any soul Travelled upon this road;
and that seemed large pity to the aging
charlatan, now that he remembered the
wavering shadows of another tree, and
his wisdom was clouded by the betraying
magic of April.
This is a magic which has had many
analysts, along with its victims, and its
effects upon the young in heart have
been duly recorded. 1T is a luxuriant
and very various magic, which, if it
flowers now and then with red murder
and with long despair and with ill-con-
sdered marriages. yet blossoms also with
fine poems and with heart-Shaking joys.
But it blossoms, too, with a regretting,
by-and-by; and a regretting now over
shadowed the wisdom and contentment
of Thomas Learmont. A regretting made
his snrg cottage, and the two acres that
he held in fee, and his wife's thrifty
housekeeping, and his three sturdy boys,
and his two fat cows, and his decent rid
ing horse, and the respect paid to his
halfmagicS by persons who hoped to
profit by them, and all the other COM
forts of proSpering soothSayer, seem
to be not quite enough to breed any COM
placency. All these were plain and solid
goods, and the shadow which had come
into his thinking made shadows seem
more lovely and more dear to him.
So he dispatched a little magic of his
own shaping, with lambs skin, and
ufith sir1t ND
and with three nails from the coffin of
young child. He duly invoked the spirits
of Malkuth and the bright lords of Net
sab and Hod, to protect and cleanse and
enlighten his desire, and the power of
this little magic did not fail him. Then
Thomas Learmont laughed, now that the
Queen Of Faery had returned to him,
who in the remote days of his youthful
ness had been her lover
He said: "The years have been long
and without any savor-" He said
then: Since you went away" He
cried with a tinge of wildneSs: Men
have made for me no words to serve my
last need! Men have not any words for
the passion and the thought which are
troubling mel"
She did not answer, but the dark eyes
of her eternal youth regarded the old
fellow fondly; her young lips smiled with
an unforgotten tenderness, and her light
young hands lay at this time upon his
shrunk and knotted hands, as though
the long years of their separation had
never been.
THEN Thomas Learmont said: You
alone mattered. All that has mat
tered in my life Is that once had your
love. Now that I become old do not
any longer try to evade this knowledge