“I will not let her know,” promised the boy, and then he hastened away to his mother’s apartments. When he came to the door he began to walk slowly and with dragging steps. He entered in and threw himself down among some cushions and closed his eyes.
“What ails you, my son?” asked his mother. “Why do you sit there so quietly instead of playing about?”
“Nothing ails me now,” answered the boy, “but there is something that I wish to know, and unless you tell me I am sure I shall be quite ill.”
“What is it that you wish to know, my darling?”
“I wish to know where my life lies, and in what it is bound up,” answered the boy.
When Suo heard this she was very much frightened.
“What do you mean?” she cried. “Who has been talking to you of your life?”
Then Dalim said what was not true, for he feared that harm might come to his pigeons. “No one has been talking to me,” said he, “but I am sure that my life lies somewhere outside of me, and if you will not tell me about it I will neither eat nor drink, and then perhaps I may die.”
At last Suo could withstand him no longer. “My son,” she said, “it is as you have guessed. You are not as other children. Your life is bound up in some object outside of yourself, and if this object should fall into the hands of an enemy the greatest misfortunes might come upon you, and perhaps even death.”
“And what is this object?” asked the boy.