"Gargoyle was under the rose-arbor this morning." It was according to custom that Evelyn Strang would relate the child's latest phase. "He sat there without stirring such a long time that I was fascinated. I noticed that he never picked a rose, never smelled one. The early sun fell slanting through their petals till they glowed like thin little wheels of fire. John dear, it was that scalloped fire which Gargoyle was staring at. The flowers seemed to lean toward him, vibrating color and perfumes too delicate for me to hear. I only saw and smelled the flowers; Gargoyle looked as if he felt them! Don't laugh; you know we look at flowers because when we were little, people always said, 'See the pretty flower, smell the pretty flower,' but no one said, 'Listen and see if you can hear the flower grow; be still and see if you can catch the flower speaking.'"
Strang never did laugh, never brushed away these fantastic ideas. Settling back in his piazza chair, his big hands locked together, he would listen, amusing himself with his pet theory of Gargoyle's "undressed mind."
"By the way," he said once, "that reminds me, have you ever seen our young Solomon of the flower-harem smile?"
"Of course I haven't; neither have you." Young Mrs. Strang averred it confidently. "He never has smiled, poor baby, nor cried—his mother told me that long ago."
The banker kept his eyes on the treetops; he had his finger-tips nicely balanced before he remarked, with seeming irrelevance:
"You know that nest in the tree we call the Siegfried tree?"
She nodded.
"The other day a bird fell out of it, one of the young ones, pushed out by a housecleaning mother, I suppose. It killed the poor little feathered gawk. I saw Gargoyle run, quick as a flash, and pick it up. He pushed open the closing eyes, tried to place the bird on a hollyhock stalk, to spread its wings, in every way to give it motion. When, after each attempt, he saw it fall to the ground, he stood still, looking at it very hard. Suddenly, to my surprise, he seemed to understand something, to comprehend it fully and delightedly. He laughed." Strang stopped, looking intently at his wife.
"I can imagine that laugh," she mused.
Strang shook his head. "I don't think you can. It—it wasn't pleasant. It was as uncanny as the rest of the little chap—a long, rattling, eerie sound, as if a tree should groan or a butterfly curse; but wait—there's more." In his earnestness Strang sat up, adding, "Then Gargoyle got up and stretched out his hands, not to the sky, but to the air all around him. It was as if—" Here Strang, the normal, healthy man of the world, hesitated; it was only the father of the little boy who had died who admitted in low tones: "You would have said—At least even I could imagine that Gargoyle—well—that he saw something like a released principle of life fly happily back to its main source—as if a little mote like a sunbeam should detach itself from a clod and, disembodied, dart back to its law of motion."