Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (77 page)

Yet,
if
he
looked
no
older,
he
certainly
did
look
different.
Different is
the
word,
though
to
analyse
this
difference
precisely
puzzles
me completely.
Things
had
passed
over
him,
he
had
enjoyed,
suffered, worn,
while
it
was
not,
I
swear,
the
physical
envelope
that
had
worn, and
his
body
at
sixty-four
looked
forty
still.
There
lay
the
imprint of
signatures
on
his
soul
perhaps,
of
vigils
due
to
an
intensity
of experience
ordinary
humans
cannot
know.
I
say
"perhaps,"
for
it
is imagination
that
interprets
such
strange
markings,
and
I
cannot expect
the
report
of
my
imagination
to
pass
as
evidence.
Were
I forced
to
find
strictly
truthful
terms,
I
should
say
that
Mantravers, during
this
four
years'
interlude
which
left
him
physically
untouched, had
inwardly
endured
things
we
may
hardly
guess
at,
much
less
define, things
possible
only
to
an
altered
consciousness
in
altered
conditions of
space
and
time,
and
whether
in
the
body
or
out
of
the
body,
to borrow
from
an
expert,
we
need
not
dare
to
fathom,
since
they
are not
knowable
to
our
three-dimensional
faculties.
Personally,
I
phrased it
thus—that
he
had
been
out
of
the
cage
we
know
as
life
and
living. He
had
escaped.

The
fact
remains
that,
of
outward
physical
signs,
his
face
and
skin alone
at
first
betrayed
him—their
incalculable,
sweet,
fiery
radiance.
It was
this
effect
of
light
that
had
struck
me
so
vividly,
even
with
a burst
of
horror,
before,
an
instant
later,
I
lost
consciousness.

This
momentary
weakness
in
myself
I
have
always
bitterly
regretted, for
it
robbed
me
of
witnessing
any
coherent
interchange
of
words and
action
between
Vronski
and
himself.
Its
duration
was
brief,
yet long
enough
for
several
minutes
to
have
passed,
during
which
we
all three
reached
the
hall
below.
Vronski
was
chafing
my
hands.
I
opened my
eyes.
"I'm
going
to
find
a
taxi,"
he
said
clearly,
as
soon
as
he saw
I
was
all
right.
"Wait
here
with
your
cousin."
He
placed
the hand
of
Mantravers
in
my
own,
and
the
front
door
closed
behind
him with
a
bang,
leaving
us
together,
sitting
side
by
side
on
two
wooden chairs.

Some
wholesome
magic
lay
perhaps
in
that
word
"taxi,"
for
a measure
of
control
came
back
to
me,
though
of
those
next
minutes I
remember
only
one
thing
clearly:
that
while
I
searched
feverishly, frantically
even,
for
something
to
say,
or
rather
to
ask,
a
thousand questions
boiling
in
me,
Mantravers
spoke
himself.
In
the
gloom
of that
dreary
hall,
lit
only
by
a
gleam
through
the
narrow
windows
from the
street,
he
turned
his
radiant
face
towards
me.
The
blaze
had dimmed,
but
it
still
shone
as
with
an
interior
lamp.