“Try it; the first word is often like a spark and starts a flame.”
Daniel was silent. The intruder said deliberatively: “That goes deep down to the recesses of the heart and up high to the things that are immortal.”
Daniel looked over at him sharply, and saw that it was the Goose Man.
II
All effort to get Daniel to talk was in vain. Along toward midnight, Benda took leave of him. Agnes unlocked the door for him; he said to her: “Look after him; he has no one else now.”
Daniel lay on the sofa with his hands crossed behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. His eyes were hot; at times he trembled and shook.
“It isn’t very sociable here,” said the Goose Man, “the air is full of tobacco smoke, and there is a draft coming in from that dark room.”
Daniel got up, closed the door, and lay down again.
The metallic exterior of the Goose Man seemed to become flexible, somewhat as when a frozen body thaws out. “You have gone through a great deal,” he continued thoughtfully. “That any one who wishes to create must also experience is clear. Experience is his mother’s milk, his realm of roots; it is where the saps flow together, from which his forms and figures are developed. But there is experience and experience, and between the two there is a world of difference.”
“Superfluous profundity,” murmured Daniel, plainly annoyed. “To live is to have experience.” He took council with himself in the attempt to devise a means by which he might get rid of the importunate chatterer.