He had been asleep, and then he had been awake. He had seen, sitting on
his bed and looking at him with mild, kind eyes his old Friend. His
Friend was always the same, conveying so absolutely kindness and
protection, and his beard, his hands, the appealing humour of his gaze,
recalled to John the early years, with a swift, imperative urgency.
John, so independent and assured, felt, nevertheless, again that old
alarm of a strange, unreal world, and the necessity of an appeal for
protection from the only one of them all who understood.
"Hallo!" said John.
"Well?" said his Friend. "It's many months since I've been to see you,
isn't it?"
"That's not my fault," said John.
"In a way, it is. You haven't wanted me, have you? Haven't given me a
thought."
"There's been so much to do. I'm going to school, you know."
"Of course. That's why I have come now."
Beside the window a dark curtain blew forward a little, bulged as though
some one were behind it, thinned again in the pale dim shadows of a moon
that, beyond the window, fought with driving clouds. That curtain
would--how many ages ago!--have tightened young John's heart with
terror, and the contrast made by his present slim indifference drew him,
in some warm, confiding fashion, closer to his visitor.
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