“You wrong me in the very essence of my individuality!” I persisted.
“If you were an individual I could not, therefore now I do not. You are but beginning to become an individual.”
All about me was a pine-forest, in which my eyes were already searching deep, in the hope of discovering an unaccountable glimmer, and so finding my way home. But, alas! how could I any longer call that house HOME, where every door, every window opened into OUT, and even the garden I could not keep inside!
I suppose I looked discomfited.
“Perhaps it may comfort you,” said the raven, “to be told that you have not yet left your house, neither has your house left you. At the same time it cannot contain you, or you inhabit it!”
“I do not understand you,” I replied. “Where am I?”
“In the region of the seven dimensions,” he answered, with a curious noise in his throat, and a flutter of his tail. “You had better follow me carefully now for a moment, lest you should hurt some one!”
“There is nobody to hurt but yourself, Mr. Raven! I confess I should rather like to hurt you!”
“That you see nobody is where the danger lies. But you see that large tree to your left, about thirty yards away?”
“Of course I do: why should I not?” I answered testily.