He introduced himself to the surgeon, and spoke of the examination at Burlington House.
"You were very kind," said Mark, "but it was an awful experience for a boy, because now——" He paused to reflect that the man opposite had not asked for his confidence.
"Yes—now?" repeated Barger.
"Now, the sense of perpetual imprisonment"—he brought out the grim words slowly—"would not convey such a sense of loss."
The surgeon was not sure that he agreed. Could a young man, a boy, measure his loss? Was the capacity for suffering greater in youth?
"I am thinking of one thing," Mark replied, "liberty, the darling instinct of the newly fledged to fly. When you clipped my wings, I had the feeling that I should never move again. The pain was piercing: one could never suffer just such another pang."
"Have you learned to hug your chains?"
"I do not say that. They gall me less."
"But as one grows older"—Amos Barger's face was seamed with distress—"one sees what might have been so clearly. You say I was kind; the other surgeon was and is one of the cast-iron pots. Well, I expect no credit for such kindness. In you I see reflected myself. I am of the weaklings, to whom some incomprehensible Power has said: 'Thus far shalt thou go—and no farther!' And I might have gone far had not my feet, the lowest part of me, failed. I am halting through life when every fibre of my body tells me I was intended to run."
Mark was trying to adjust words to his sympathy, when the other continued abruptly: "Don't say a word! We are poles asunder and must remain so. I am surprised that I spoke at all. You have a faculty, Mr. Samphire, of luring Truth from her well."