I knew, of course, what it meant; I had just seen a play about delirium, and had got a whack on the head, and now I was delirious myself.  I thought I must be badly hurt; I bowed my reeling head in my arms, and began to sob like a kid, out loud, and without shame.  But somehow I forgot about the big brute, and his face that I wanted to pound; instead, I was ashamed and bewildered, a queer hysterical state with a half dozen emotions mixed up.  The Caligari story was in it, and the lunatic asylum; I’ve got a cracked skull, I thought, and my mind will never get right again!  I sat, huddled and shuddering; until suddenly I felt a quiet hand on my shoulder, and heard a gentle voice saying:  “Don’t be afraid.  It is I.”

Now, I shall waste no time telling you how amazed I was.  It was a long time before I could believe what was happening to me; I thought I was clean off my head.  I lifted my eyes, and there, in the aisle of the most decorous church of St. Bartholomew, standing with his hand on my head, was the figure out of the stained glass window!  I looked at him twice, and then I looked at the window.  Where the figure had been was a great big hole with the sun shining through!

We know the power of suggestion, and especially when one taps the deeps of the unconscious, where our childhood memories are buried.  I had been brought up in a religious family, and so it seemed quite natural to me that while that hand lay on my head, the throbbing and whirling should cease, and likewise the fear.  I became perfectly quiet, and content to sit under the friendly spell.  “Why were you crying?” asked the voice, at last.

I answered, hesitatingly, “I think it was humiliation.”

“Is it something you have done?”

“No.  Something that was done to me.”

“But how can a man be humiliated by the act of another?”

I saw what he meant; and I was not humiliated any more.

The stranger spoke again.  “A mob,” he said, “is a blind thing, worse than madness.  It is the beast in man running away with his master.”

I thought to myself:  how can he know what has happened to me?  But then I reflected, perhaps he saw them drive me into the church!  I found myself with a sudden, queer impulse to apologize for those soldier boys.  “We had some terrible fighting,” I cried.  “And you know what wars do—­to the minds of the people, I mean.”

“Yes,” said the stranger, “I know, only too well.”

I had meant to explain this mob; but somehow, I decided that I could not.  How could I make him understand moving picture shows, and German competition, and ex-service men out of jobs?  There was a pause, and he asked, “Can you stand up?”

I tried and found that I could.  I felt the side of my jaw, and it hurt, but somehow the pain seemed apart from myself.  I could see clearly and steadily; there were only two things wrong that I could find—­first, this stranger standing by my side, and second, that hole in the window, where I had seen him standing so many Sunday mornings!