“Yes!” I said. “I’m sure He does! He loves every living thing. Even sinful men. How much more the animals, that cannot sin!”
“I don’t know what ‘sin’ means,” said Sylvie. And I didn’t try to explain it.
“Come, my child,” I said, trying to lead her away. “Wish goodbye to the poor hare, and come and look for blackberries.”
“Goodbye, poor hare!” Sylvie obediently repeated, looking over her shoulder at it as we turned away. And then, all in a moment, her self-command gave way. Pulling her hand out of mine, she ran back to where the dead hare was lying, and flung herself down at its side in such an agony of grief as I could hardly have believed possible in so young a child.
“Oh, my darling, my darling!” she moaned, over and over again. “And God meant your life to be so beautiful!”
Sometimes, but always keeping her face hidden on the ground, she would reach out one little hand, to stroke the poor dead thing, and then once more bury her face in her hands, and sob as if her heart would break.
I was afraid she would really make herself ill: still I thought it best to let her weep away the first sharp agony of grief: and, after a few minutes, the sobbing gradually ceased, and Sylvie rose to her feet, and looked calmly at me, though tears were still streaming down her cheeks.
I did not dare to speak again, just yet; but simply held out my hand to her, that we might quit the melancholy spot.
“Yes, I’ll come now,” she said. Very reverently she kneeled down, and kissed the dead hare; then rose and gave me her hand, and we moved on in silence.
A child’s sorrow is violent, but short; and it was almost in her usual voice that she said, after a minute, “Oh stop, stop! Here are some lovely blackberries!”
We filled our hands with fruit, and returned in all haste to where the Professor and Bruno were seated on a bank, awaiting our return.
Just before we came within hearing-distance, Sylvie checked me. “Please don’t tell Bruno about the hare!” she said.
“Very well, my child. But why not?”
Tears again glittered in those sweet eyes, and she turned her head away, so that I could scarcely hear her reply. “He’s—he’s very fond of gentle creatures, you know. And he’d—he’d be so sorry! I don’t want him to be made sorry.”
“And your agony of sorrow is to count for nothing, then, sweet unselfish child!” I thought to myself. But no more was said till we had reached our friends; and Bruno was far too much engrossed, in the feast we had brought him, to take any notice of Sylvie’s unusually grave manner.
“I’m afraid it’s getting rather late, Professor?” I said.
“Yes, indeed,” said the Professor. “I must take you all through the Ivory Door again. You’ve stayed your full time.”
“Mightn’t we stay a little longer!” pleaded Sylvie.
“Just one minute!” added Bruno.
But the Professor was unyielding. “It’s a great privilege, coming through at all,” he said. “We must go now.” And we followed him obediently to the Ivory Door, which he threw open, and signed to me to go through first.
“You’re coming too, aren’t you?” I said to Sylvie.
“Yes,” she said: “but you won’t see us after you’ve gone through.”
“But suppose I wait for you outside?” I asked, as I stepped through the doorway.
“In that case,” said Sylvie, “I think the potato would be quite justified in asking your weight. I can quite imagine a really superior kidney-potato declining to argue with anyone under fifteen stone!”
With a great effort I recovered the thread of my thoughts. “We lapse very quickly into nonsense!” I said.
XXII
Crossing the Line
“Let us lapse back again,” said Lady Muriel. “Take another cup of tea? I hope that’s sound common sense?”
“And all that strange adventure,” I thought, “has occupied the space of a single comma in Lady Muriel’s speech! A single comma, for which grammarians tell us to ‘count one’!” (I felt no doubt that the Professor had kindly put back the time for me, to the exact point at which I had gone to sleep.)
When, a few minutes afterwards, we left the house, Arthur’s first remark was certainly a strange one. “We’ve been there just twenty minutes,” he said, “and I’ve done nothing but listen to you and Lady Muriel talking: and yet, somehow, I feel exactly as if I had been talking with her for an hour at least!”
And so he had been, I felt no doubt: only, as the time had been put back to the beginning of the tête-à-tête he referred to, the whole of it had passed into oblivion, if not into nothingness! But I valued my own reputation for sanity too highly to venture on explaining to him what had happened.
For some cause, which I could not at the moment divine, Arthur was unusually grave and silent during our walk home. It could not be connected with Eric Lindon, I thought, as he had for some days been away in London: so that, having Lady Muriel almost “all to himself”—for I was only too glad to hear those two conversing, to have any wish to intrude any remarks of my own—he ought, theoretically, to have been specially radiant and contented with life. “Can he have heard any bad news?” I said to myself. And, almost as if he had read my thoughts, he spoke.
“He will be here by the last train,” he said, in the tone of one who is continuing a conversation rather than beginning one.
“Captain Lindon, do you mean?”
“Yes—Captain Lindon,” said Arthur: “I said ‘he,’ because I fancied we were talking about him. The Earl told me he comes tonight, though tomorrow is the day when he will know about the Commission that he’s hoping for. I wonder he doesn’t stay another day to hear the result, if he’s really so anxious about
