He shook his head slowly, and gave the peculiar answer:
"They're all in there."
"But Stahl, perhaps—if I could get him here?"
An expression of gentle disapproval crossed his face, then melted softly into a wistful tenderness as of a child.
"He's not there—yet," he whispered, "but he will come too in the end. In sleep, I think, he goes there even now."
"Where are you really then?" I ventured, "And where is it you go to?"
The answer came unhesitatingly; there was no doubt or searching.
"Into myself, my real and deeper self, and so beyond it into her—the
Earth. Where all the others are—all, all, all."
And then he frightened me by sitting up in bed abruptly. His eyes stared past me—out beyond the close confining walls. The movement was so startling with its suddenness and vigor that I shrank back a moment. The head was sideways. He was intently listening.
"Hark!" he whispered. "They are calling me! Do you hear…?"