He warily looked about. The doors were open; he would go out. If any one stopped him he would know they thought him mad; and if they did, he would knock them down and run. But no one seemed to care where he was going. He passed Ethel and she bowed to him, with a cordial good-morning; and Daniel Heem, who was reading on the other balcony, bowed cordially; but it was all with the air that they were all alike, and at their ease in that house. There were two men down by the lake-bluffs. But no one seemed to care where he was going. The air and the sunshine were good; and it felt strangely good (though queer) to use his own legs. He looked about warily, tarrying in the rose-garden. But no infant ever longed more than he for caressing love; and no man fired with wrath against some tormenting thing, felt readier than he to deal a death-blow. Yes, he would get away to the little old arbor in the shrubbery, and there, all alone, he would cry his heart free (he told himself) for something he had lost. Then crying as he ran, and running as he cried, he at last flung himself down on the breast of mother earth, longing for some unnamable treasure. What had befallen? Realms of being had been opened to his knowledge, whose delights the repeating power of his brain could not repicture. He felt as if starving for what he had lost. He bit at the earth, with inarticulate cries of soul-bereftness. Suddenly two arms closed about him, lifting him till his head rested on a throbbing bosom. They tightened till he felt himself swayed gently to and fro, while sobs, strong as his own, shook the rocking form which held him. As he lay extended, half along the ground and half in this sheltering care, there came to him something of that sort of peace in which his senses had been enveloped when he before had floated away into that child-kingdom from which he had had last night so rude an awakening. He waited wonderingly. A hand pressed back the hair from his forehead. “Don’t you know me, Reginald?” He opened his eyes and saw black velvet. Was he dead? Was coffin couch so soft? Did angel arms so sweetly clasp poor mortal form within that narrow bound? Not yet, at least. For bending over him he saw black orbs and cheeks tear-flushed. The velvet was a woman’s dress; and laces there rose and fell with the palpitations of a woman’s heart. It was Mrs. Mancredo; and she held him tight, as if she would never let him go. “I thought you were my mother,” he said. “Ethel Daksha, do you mean?” she asked, after a strange pause. “No-o-o, my own dear mother. I thought I was well dead at last; I wish I were. I have been so knocked about.” Presently he said, out of the silence, in a good common-sense way: “I must be awfully sick, or you wouldn’t hold me—like this, as if—as if I were fainted, you know.”