"Ah! I have to choose, you mean. I have to know first what the other feels about it."
I began to understand better. It was a game. And all games delighted me.
"You may put it roughly so, yes," he explained, "you're very quick. I'll give you a rule to guide you," he went on. I listened with an effort; this tinkling soon wearied me; I could not think long or much; my way, it seemed, was feeling. "Ask yourself always how what you do will affect another," Dr. Fillery concluded. "That's a safe rule for you."
"That is of children," I observed. We stared at each other a moment. "Both sides keep it?" I asked.
"Childish," he agreed, "it certainly is. Both sides, yes, keep it."
I sighed, and the sigh seemed to rise from my very feet, passing through my whole being. He looked at me most kindly then, asking why I sighed.
"I used to be free," I told him. "This is not liberty. And why are we not all free together?"
"It is liberty for two instead of only for one," he said, "and so, in the long run, liberty for all."
"So that's where they are," I remarked, but to myself and not to him. "Not further than that." For what I had once known, but now, it seemed, forgotten, was far beyond such a foolish little game. We had lived without such tiny tricks. We lived openly and unafraid. We worked in harmony. We lived. Yes—but who was "we"? That was the part I had forgotten.
"It's the growth and development of civilization," I heard the little drift of wind go whistling thinly, "and it won't take you long to become quite civilized at this rate, more civilized, indeed, than most—with your swift intelligence and lightning insight."