Page:Bambi (1914).djvu/204



AMBI sat, chin on hand, staring off into the distance so long that the Professor’s attention was finally attracted to her. She held Jarvis’s letter in her hand—his call-to-arms letter.

“No bad news, I hope?” ventured her father.

“Oh, no; good news. The best. Jarvis is alive!”

“Why, you didn’t think he was dead?”

“Yes, in a sense he was dead.”

“Strange I never noticed it.”

“I mean that he was only fully alive to himself. He was dead to other people. He has been dangerously self-centred.”

“And now—”

“Now many hands are knocking at his postern gate!”

“What enigmatic things you do say, my child!”

“Don’t you understand? Jarvis has built a high wall about himself, his precious self. He was a sort of superman, called to sit in a high tower and dream, Rh