“And what do you feel?... Your own past of feelings, that is what you feel. Your mother, your easy village life alone with your mother. Nine-tenths of it.”
“Well: isn’t that life as well as this?”
“It’s dream!”
“I do not see the difference very clearly.... My mother was: and my love for her. They are more real to me than the hardness of the city. Perhaps, Tom, it is the hardness of men which is dream.”
“If your love and your life with your mother are reality, lean on them now.”
“I live with them, Tom.”
Tom walked up and down.
“I leave you in your dream, David. I want to. But some shock of the outer world will come and wake you. You are walking in your sleep. I want gentle hands to bring you to yourself, at a safe moment, at a safe place. Lest you fall, David.”
David was up also. They faced each other: the tall gentle unkempt boy and the sharp sure measure of Tom: the boy with bright slow eyes, against the weary quickness of the other.
“I may be more right than you.” David’s voice was low. It had a full cadence of shaded notes. “I don’t think what we reason out is always sure. I can’t explain. I believe that just the same.” About his low voice the room darkened. What was light and certain of the room was the spirit of the friends grappling within shadows.