She passed her hand over her forehead.
“Don’t worry, Sinclair, nothing has happened to him. He has retired into himself. It will not last long.”
She got up and went out into the garden, although it had begun to rain. I felt that I must not follow her. So I walked up and down in the hall, inhaling the scent of the hyacinths which dulled my senses, and gazing at my picture of the bird over the door. I felt oppressively the odd shadow which seemed to fill the house that morning. What was it? What had happened?
Mother Eve came back soon. Rain drops hung in her dark hair. She sat down in her easy chair. She was very tired. I went to her, bent down and kissed the raindrops in her hair. Her eyes were bright and soft, but the raindrops tasted like tears.
“Shall I go and see how he is?” I asked in a whisper.
She smiled weakly.
“Don’t be a child, Sinclair!” she admonished loudly, as if to relieve her own feelings. “Go now and come back later, I cannot talk to you now.”
I went. I walked out of the house and out of the town, towards the mountains. The thin rain was falling obliquely, and clouds were driving at a low altitude under heavy pressure, as if in fear. Down below there was hardly any breeze, but on the heights above a storm seemed to be raging. Several times the sun, pale and bright, broke for an instant through the steely grey of the clouds.
There came a fleecy, yellow cloud driving across the sky. It collided with the grey cloud wall, and in a few seconds the wind formed a picture of the yellow and blue, of a bird of giant size, which tore itself free from the blue mêlée and with wide fluttering wings disappeared in the sky. Then the storm became audible and rain mixed with hail rattled down. A short burst of thunder with an unnatural and terrific sound cracked over the whipped landscape. Immediately after the sun broke through and on the mountains close at hand above brown woods glistened, pale and unreal, the fresh snow.
When I returned after several hours, wet from the rain and wind, Demian himself opened the front door to me.