‘That was the beginning,’ Graham murmured. ‘Do you know that from that day until last night I have never dreamed of you, nor of the place where I used to find you ... never till last night.’
‘And last night you did?’
Graham glanced up at his companion. ‘It all came back,’ he answered simply. ‘You were there—just as before I went to school—but changed—a little changed.’ He tried to remember. ‘I can’t exactly say what the difference was,’ he went on slowly, turning it over in his mind. Then he paused, in his effort to puzzle it out? ‘Why should you have come back?—after so long, I mean. Why, if you were coming, should you not have come sooner?’
‘Ah, I can’t tell you,’ smiled Brocklehurst. ‘Perhaps if you had asked me last night——!’
‘You would have told me?... You did tell me, but I don’t remember what you said. Somehow it has all grown very dim. Your being with me here, I think, has thrown the other back.’
‘But wasn’t it to tell you something that I returned?’
A peculiar, half-baffled expression passed across Graham’s face. ‘I thought I was going to remember,’ he sighed, ‘but it has gone again.... I suppose I shall never know now.’
‘Ah, well, I can’t help you any further.’ Brocklehurst watched him with some amusement.
‘No.’ He sighed again. Then he looked across once more at his companion. ‘As soon as I fell asleep I saw him—my dream-boy. I awoke, it seemed, on the sea-shore, at the very gate of his garden. And I heard his voice calling me—calling, calling.... Oh, I remembered his voice so well! I opened the gate, and he was there.’
He paused a moment, and his eyes grew dark with a strange shadow. And it was through this shadow that his next words seemed to drop, his voice becoming lower and lower, till at length it was scarce audible, scarce more than a whisper.