“I did,” said Ethel.
“How did you get back?”
“It was my inner self that went. No one looking at my outer self—my body—could have seen that I was away.”
“Well,” said Reginald, after a prolonged look into her face and his own memories: “I see that you are the same old truthful young girl, who said kind words to me one day out on your balcony, all about my mother and roses, and the goodness of wealth, and that you wished, with me, that I was but five years old. Now what you say would look to some people uncommon unlikely. But—but if you don’t know about your own hair—whose hair should—” He heard an hysterical giggle.
“Oh, there she is at her old tricks. There’s Mrs. Mancredo making fun of a fellow,” he said irritably.
“But then, you see,” said Ethel, “she’s not been away, as you and Daniel and I have. But you will soon find your way back; we did, though it seemed unnatural at first, and we felt homesick for the upper air. Sleep now; in the morning all will seem more natural, and Mrs. Mancredo will help you.”
He slept, and slept soundly. In the morning he was up early. What he wanted to see now, was Mrs. Mancredo. She seemed to him somehow to be his oldest friend; and a homesickness for old, old friends had begun to lay hold on him.
He warily looked about. The doors were open; he would go out. If any one stopped him he would know they thought him mad; and if they did, he would knock them down and run. But no one seemed to care where he was going. He passed Ethel and she bowed to him, with a cordial good-morning; and Daniel Heem, who was reading on the other balcony, bowed cordially; but it was all with the air that they were all alike, and at their ease in that house.
There were two men down by the lake-bluffs. But no one seemed to care where he was going. The air and the sunshine were good; and it felt strangely good (though queer) to use his own legs. He looked about warily, tarrying in the rose-garden. But no infant ever longed more than he for caressing love; and no man fired with wrath against some tormenting thing, felt readier than he to deal a death-blow. Yes, he would get away to the little old arbor in the shrubbery, and there, all alone, he would cry his heart free (he told himself) for something he had lost. Then crying as he ran, and running as he cried, he at last flung himself down on the breast of mother earth, longing for some unnamable treasure.
What had befallen? Realms of being had been opened to his knowledge, whose delights the repeating power of his brain could not repicture. He felt as if starving for what he had lost. He bit at the earth, with inarticulate cries of soul-bereftness.