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CROME YELLOW
287

lingered hissingly over the word. “He will ask you, ‘Can you tell me the way to Paradise?’ and you will answer, ‘Yes, I'll show you,’ and walk with him down towards the little hazel copse. I cannot read what will happen after that.” There was a silence.

“Is it really true?” asked white muslin.

The witch gave a shrug of the shoulders. “I merely tell you what I read in your hand. Good afternoon. That will be sixpence. Yes, I have change. Thank you. Good afternoon.”

Denis stepped down from the bench; tied insecurely and crookedly to the tent-pole, the Union Jack hung limp on the windless air. ‘If only I could do things like that!” he thought, as he carried the bench back to the tea-tent.

Anne was sitting behind a long table filling thick white cups from an urn. A neat pile of printed sheets lay before her onthe table. Denis took one of them and looked at it affectionately. It was his poem. They had printed five hundred copies, and very nice the quarto broad-sheets looked.

“Have you sold many?” he asked in a casual tone.