On this particular point, at least, I asked no questions; but on the general subject of my uneasiness I sometimes probed him.
“This sense of funk when I remember these old forgotten things,” I asked, “what is it? Why does it frighten me?”
Gazing at me out of those strange eyes that saw into so huge a universe, he answered softly:
“It’s a faint memory too—of the first pains and trials you suffered when you began to learn. You feel the old wrench and strain.”
“It hurt so——?”
He nodded, with that smile of yearning that sometimes shone so beautifully on his face.
“At first,” he replied. “It seemed like losing your life—until you got far enough to know the great happiness of the bigger way of living. Coming back to me like this revives it. We began to learn together, you see.”
I mentioned the extraordinary feelings of the playground when first I spoke with him, and of the class-room when first we saw each other.
“Ah,” he sighed, “there’s no mistaking it—the coming together of old friends or enemies. The instant the eyes meet, the flash of memory follows. Only, the tie must have been real, of course, to make it binding.”