As his memory of that remote childish experience ran, he did at the very first sight of that door experience a peculiar emotion, an attraction, a desire to get to the door and open it and walk in.  And at the same time he had the clearest conviction that either it was unwise or it was wrong of him—­he could not tell which—­to yield to this attraction.  He insisted upon it as a curious thing that he knew from the very beginning—­unless memory has played him the queerest trick—­that the door was unfastened, and that he could go in as he chose.

I seem to see the figure of that little boy, drawn and repelled.  And it was very clear in his mind, too, though why it should be so was never explained, that his father would be very angry if he went through that door.

Wallace described all these moments of hesitation to me with the utmost particularity.  He went right past the door, and then, with his hands in his pockets, and making an infantile attempt to whistle, strolled right along beyond the end of the wall.  There he recalls a number of mean, dirty shops, and particularly that of a plumber and decorator, with a dusty disorder of earthenware pipes, sheet lead ball taps, pattern books of wall paper, and tins of enamel.  He stood pretending to examine these things, and coveting, passionately desiring the green door.

Then, he said, he had a gust of emotion.  He made a run for it, lest hesitation should grip him again, he went plump with outstretched hand through the green door and let it slam behind him.  And so, in a trice, he came into the garden that has haunted all his life.

It was very difficult for Wallace to give me his full sense of that garden into which he came.

There was something in the very air of it that exhilarated, that gave one a sense of lightness and good happening and well being; there was something in the sight of it that made all its colour clean and perfect and subtly luminous.  In the instant of coming into it one was exquisitely glad—­as only in rare moments and when one is young and joyful one can be glad in this world.  And everything was beautiful there . . . . .

Wallace mused before he went on telling me.  “You see,” he said, with the doubtful inflection of a man who pauses at incredible things, “there were two great panthers there . . .  Yes, spotted panthers.  And I was not afraid.  There was a long wide path with marble-edged flower borders on either side, and these two huge velvety beasts were playing there with a ball.  One looked up and came towards me, a little curious as it seemed.  It came right up to me, rubbed its soft round ear very gently against the small hand I held out and purred.  It was, I tell you, an enchanted garden.  I know.  And the size?  Oh! it stretched far and wide, this way and that.  I believe there were hills far away.  Heaven knows where West Kensington had suddenly got to.  And somehow it was just like coming home.