Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/393

Rh and the Park swung into the River: and the River suddenly straightened up and thrust like a lance, quivering white, to the Sky. The Sky came down in a great gust of wind and lifted the beating feet and garlanded the trees among the dancing legs of men, and stuck branches into the windows of the rollicking houses. Karl breathed in measure.

The stillness was very thick like a night without clouds and with neither moon nor stars.

Now, in the dancing stillness like a single star, a voice:

"Think!"

The tramp was moveless beside him. His voice: "Think! for the Time is not yet."

The star-voice neared, no longer the moveless tramp's. It pierced, it was a shriek "Think! Think!"

Karl jumped up from the bench. "Think, think!" he echoed.

He thought. He beat with his thought against the dancing world. He lunged and thrust: he hewed with his thought and beat. He beat the Sky up. He beat the houses back. He thrust the trees down. The strong boy and the idiot boy, the eater of dirt, the dwarf, the picker and reader of scraps, he hewed and beat apart from their thick dance. He trampled with his thought the Park into the ground

Then all was as it should be And it was as if he had fallen an unfathomable distance.

He sat upon his bench under the darkling sky, alone, beside the bearded man whom he had seen so often.

He turned to him and nodded.

The tramp's reticent blue eyes nodded and turned away.

"It's getting late," said Karl.

He was tingling, as from a mighty fall that had not killed him, that had made him drunk. It was as if an infinitude of space coursed through his veins, as he had coursed through an infinitude of space. He was daring as never before.

"Would you mind," he turned again, very courteous, very quiet, towards the tramp, "would you mind, sir, telling me who you are?"

The look of the frail man was steady and far beyond him. His words came very still, very far away through the straight gold beard.

"You have seen me often," he said, "and asked me nothing. You