I stood up, and he turned familiarly about me and whispered like an echo in my ear, “Out of thin air.”  And he laughed.

“And you?” he went on.  “On what star did you begin?  Can you tell me?  Never yet have I found a man who could answer that question.  But we do not know, because we cannot remember.  My conscious life began one evening long ago when I stepped out of a coach on to a high road, this same road by which you have your cave.  I had come from God-knows-where.  I went backward, I came forward; I went all about and round about, and never found my kith and kin.  I was absorbed into the world of men and shared its illusions, lived in cities, worked for causes, worshipped idols.  But thanks to the bright wise sun I always escaped from those ‘gloomy agreeable nooks.’  It has now become my religion to avoid the town, the places where men make little homes which make us forget that in truth we have no homes.  I have learned to do without the town, without the great machine that provides man with a living. I have sucked in a thousand rains, and absorbed a thousand suns, lain on many thousand banks of the earth.  I have walked at the foot of mountains along long green valleys, I have climbed great ranges and peeped over them, I have lived in barren and in fertile places, and my road-companion has been Nature herself.”

I smiled upon my visitor and said, “How like you are to me, my friend!  Stay with me and let us talk awhile.  Grey days come, and rain, and we shall live in this cave together and converse.  In you I see a brother man.  In you as in a clear mirror I see the picture of my own soul, a darling shadow.  Your songs shall be the words of my happiness, your yearning shall be the expression of my own aching heart.  I shall break bread with you and we shall bathe together in the river.  I shall sleep with you and wake with you, and be content to see you where’er I turn.”

That evening at sunset he crawled with me into the cave.  And he slept so sweetly that I held him in my own heart.  Next morning at sunrise we clambered out together, and together we gathered sticks, and together bent over the fire and blew into its struggling little flames.  Life was rich.  We hob-nobbed together.  We doubled all our happinesses, and we promised to share all our griefs.  Sitting on the rocks—­there were many of them about, of all shape and size—­we taught one another songs.  I wrote songs; he sang them.  I told him of places where I had been; he described them to me so that they lived again before me.  I told him of beauteous women I had met; he had met them also and revealed to me their loving hearts.  He could give the leaping love in my heart a precious name.  I verily believe that when the sun was setting golden behind a great cliff, he could bid it stop and shine upon us an hour longer.

Timid and shy at first, he grew more daring afterwards and interpreted my wishes even before I was myself aware of them.  He was constantly devising some new happiness.  His bird’s heart was a fast overflowing fountain.