A few days later, after I had on two occasions waited for him in vain, I met him late one evening in the street. He came stumbling round a corner, blown along by the cold night wind. He was very drunk. I did not like to call him. He passed by without noticing me, staring in front of him with strange, glowing eyes, as though he were moving in obedience to a dark call from the unknown. I followed him down one street. He drifted along as if drawn by an invisible wire, with the swaying gait of a fanatic, or like a ghost. Sadly I went home, to the unsolved problems of my dreams.
“Thus he renews the world in himself!” I thought, and felt instantly that my thought was base and moral. What did I know of his dreams? Perhaps in his intoxication he was going a surer way than in my anxiety.
In the intervals between lessons it struck me once or twice that a boy who had never before attracted my notice was hovering about in my proximity. It was a little, weak-looking, slim youngster with reddish-blond thin hair, who had something peculiar in his look and behavior. One evening as I came home he was on the watch for me in the street. He let me pass by, then walked behind me; and remained standing in front of the door of the house.
“Can I do anything for you?” I asked.
“I only want to speak to you,” he said timidly. “Be good enough to come a few steps with me.”
I followed him, observing that he was deeply excited and full of expectation. His hands trembled.
“Are you a Spiritualist?” he asked quite suddenly.
“No, Knauer,” I said, laughing. “Not a bit. How did you get hold of that idea?”
“But you are a Theosophist?”