"May I come, too, Lady Rachel? I mean when this mossy-whiskered physician unties me." "May!" she said, scornfully. "You must. Where else should you go?" "It's queer, but it seems like home, Hagar. I never saw it. Wasn't Hagar the mother of homeless Ishmaelites?" So Mrs. Mavering was gone. One Sabrina, a fat negro woman, was left, who shook the floor with her tread, who wore extraordinary green kerchiefs on her head, and exploded in a melting gobble of mirth at Gard's every remark, till humor became a burden and he tried depression. "I shall die, Sabrina." Sabrina gobbled with joy. He tried wrath. "You're a galoop, Sabrina, a galoop!"--and Sabrina spilled his coffee over her billows of delight. Mavering appeared and disappeared, brought with him once a big, deep-breathing man, slightly singular in dress, with a blown, gray beard and hair, soft eyes, and affectionate, impulsive ways. Mavering introduced him. "He calls himself a poet, not a Plesiosaurus. His poetry looks as if it were written, nevertheless, by a saurian with one of his fins. I recommend you two to mutual and plastic embraces." Afterwards the gray man came often of himself, and would sit by the bedside, holding Gard's white, bony fingers, and recite: "Out of the cradle endlessly rocking--" * * * * * "... do I not see my love fluttering out there among the breakers? What is that little black thing I see there in the white?" Or, "The Song of Myself"-- "A child said, 'What is the grass?' fetching it to me with full hands." They grew suddenly friendly and confident, and talked art and letters. "Some of that is good stuff," Gard remarked, "and it's all yeasty--something stirring in it. But I don't see--Here, you're an egoist, too--you simply whoop with it--and impartially affectionate at the same time as a self-obliterated Buddhist." "They are one. The more I love myself, the more I love you." "But what do you mean by, 'If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, translucent mould of me'? Now, that's belated Greek." "It's nothing old. It's new and democratic." Gard grumbled feebly. "It sounds queer enough for a gospel. It won't do for me now. I shall have to fat up to it." The gray man leaned forward with that tremulous, dewy look in his eyes. He seemed to have an immense capacity of feeling, a physique made large to endure it. "You didn't love yourself enough. All that wasn't love. You didn't love any one. Love inward, love outward, love everywhere, love some one most, love many much. All empty without that, a drifting boat without anchor. You look for the boatman. No one there. Drowned? No. Never was there." After a long silence--"Say that 'Cradle' thing again. It's a man's soul in the body of a whale. I don't believe it's new and democratic. It must be old and human. But I know what you mean."