He sat down on one of the trunks, trying to subdue his excitement, his hands clenched.
"If this feeling lasts I can do anything, anything, you understand, learn everything, do everything, be everything. I have power. Ever since you left yesterday I've felt full of steel springs, all tightly coiled. Only I must be careful. If they went off all at once there'd be an explosion, and I'm afraid I couldn't ever be repaired."
She grimaced with an effort at mock dismay which was not wholly successful. She divined the literal truth under his jesting. The springs were coiled and their steel was not too well tempered, she believed. The thought left a shadow on her face.
"You're not doubting anything?" he asked quickly.
"Not doubting, O youth! Only a little innocent wonder."
"But isn't life an enchantment? Isn't it all miracles? Oh, I understand poets at last. They can't tell you their secret unless you already know it. They sing in big numbers. They say a million is true, and you say, 'Yes, that's very pretty, but it's poetry—exaggeration; he really means that a hundred is true,' and you never know any better till the light comes. Then you see that the poet was literal and quite prosaic all the time. The whole million was always true, in beauty and bigness and wonder."
"Stop!" she protested. "You're making me feel as old as the world itself, ancient and scarred with wisdom."
"You!" he burst in, "you're as young as the world. You are foolish and I am the wise one if you can't see that. Indeed, you're looking beautifully foolish this minute. You are thinking all kinds of doubts underneath a lot of things you won't tell me. You're secretive. You hide a lot from me."
She laughed, a little uneasily.
"You are a babe for wisdom," she retorted; "but you're not to be enlightened in a day—nor by me. I'll give you a year. You shall tell me then which of us two is the older. Now you must be at your packing. Can you be ready by Monday?"