Cotgrave saw him open a venerable bureau that stood there, and from some
secret recess he drew out a parcel, and came back to the window where
they had been sitting. Ambrose undid a wrapping of paper, and produced a green pocket-book. 'You will take care of it?' he said. 'Don't leave it lying about. It is
one of the choicer pieces in my collection, and I should be very sorry
if it were lost.' He fondled the faded binding. 'I knew the girl who wrote this,' he said. 'When you read it, you will
see how it illustrates the talk we have had to-night. There is a sequel,
too, but I won't talk of that.' 'There was an odd article in one of the reviews some months ago,' he
began again, with the air of a man who changes the subject. 'It was
written by a doctor--Dr. Coryn, I think, was the name. He says that a
lady, watching her little girl playing at the drawing-room window,
suddenly saw the heavy sash give way and fall on the child's fingers. The lady fainted, I think, but at any rate the doctor was summoned, and
when he had dressed the child's wounded and maimed fingers he was
summoned to the mother. She was groaning with pain, and it was found
that three fingers of her hand, corresponding with those that had been
injured on the child's hand, were swollen and inflamed, and later, in
the doctor's language, purulent sloughing set in.' Ambrose still handled delicately the green volume. 'Well, here it is,' he said at last, parting with difficulty, it seemed,
from his treasure. 'You will bring it back as soon as you have read it,' he said, as they
went out into the hall, into the old garden, faint with the odour of
white lilies. There was a broad red band in the east as Cotgrave turned to go, and
from the high ground where he stood he saw that awful spectacle of
London in a dream. THE GREEN BOOK

The morocco binding of the book was faded, and the colour had grown
faint, but there were no stains nor bruises nor marks of usage. The book
looked as if it had been bought 'on a visit to London' some seventy or
eighty years ago, and had somehow been forgotten and suffered to lie
away out of sight. There was an old, delicate, lingering odour about it,
such an odour as sometimes haunts an ancient piece of furniture for a
century or more. The end-papers, inside the binding, were oddly
decorated with coloured patterns and faded gold. It looked small, but
the paper was fine, and there were many leaves, closely covered with
minute, painfully formed characters. I found this book (the manuscript began) in a drawer in the old bureau
that stands on the landing. It was a very rainy day and I could not go
out, so in the afternoon I got a candle and rummaged in the bureau. Nearly all the drawers were full of old dresses, but one of the small
ones looked empty, and I found this book hidden right at the back. I
wanted a book like this, so I took it to write in. It is full of
secrets. I have a great many other books of secrets I have written,
hidden in a safe place, and I am going to write here many of the old
secrets and some new ones; but there are some I shall not put down at
all. I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I
found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian
language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the
chief songs. I may write something about all these things but not the
way to do them, for peculiar reasons. And I must not say who the Nymphs
are, or the Dôls, or Jeelo, or what voolas mean. All these are most
secret secrets, and I am glad when I remember what they are, and how
many wonderful languages I know, but there are some things that I call
the secrets of the secrets of the secrets that I dare not think of
unless I am quite alone, and then I shut my eyes, and put my hands over
them and whisper the word, and the Alala comes. I only do this at night
in my room or in certain woods that I know, but I must not describe
them, as they are secret woods. Then there are the Ceremonies, which are
all of them important, but some are more delightful than others--there
are the White Ceremonies, and the Green Ceremonies, and the Scarlet
Ceremonies. The Scarlet Ceremonies are the best, but there is only one
place where they can be performed properly, though there is a very nice
imitation which I have done in other places. Besides these, I have the
dances, and the Comedy, and I have done the Comedy sometimes when the
others were looking, and they didn't understand anything about it. I
was very little when I first knew about these things. When I was very small, and mother was alive, I can remember remembering
things before that, only it has all got confused. But I remember when I
was five or six I heard them talking about me when they thought I was
not noticing. They were saying how queer I was a year or two before, and
how nurse had called my mother to come and listen to me talking all to
myself, and I was saying words that nobody could understand. I was
speaking the Xu language, but I only remember a very few of the words,
as it was about the little white faces that used to look at me when I
was lying in my cradle. They used to talk to me, and I learnt their
language and talked to them in it about some great white place where
they lived, where the trees and the grass were all white, and there were
white hills as high up as the moon, and a cold wind. I have often
dreamed of it afterwards, but the faces went away when I was very
little. But a wonderful thing happened when I was about five. My nurse
was carrying me on her shoulder; there was a field of yellow corn, and
we went through it, it was very hot. Then we came to a path through a
wood, and a tall man came after us, and went with us till we came to a
place where there was a deep pool, and it was very dark and shady. Nurse
put me down on the soft moss under a tree, and she said: 'She can't get
to the pond now.' So they left me there, and I sat quite still and
watched, and out of the water and out of the wood came two wonderful
white people, and they began to play and dance and sing. They were a
kind of creamy white like the old ivory figure in the drawing-room; one
was a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, and a grave face, and long
black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile at the other, who
laughed and came to her. They played together, and danced round and
round the pool, and they sang a song till I fell asleep. Nurse woke me
up when she came back, and she was looking something like the lady had
looked, so I told her all about it, and asked her why she looked like
that. At first she cried, and then she looked very frightened, and
turned quite pale. She put me down on the grass and stared at me, and I
could see she was shaking all over. Then she said I had been dreaming,
but I knew I hadn't. Then she made me promise not to say a word about it
to anybody, and if I did I should be thrown into the black pit.