This tree here in the garden is only the sort of tree that any
schoolboy would have climbed. Yes, that's the thing that has
haunted us all about him, the thing we could never fit a word to.
Whether he is my old schoolfellow or no, at least he is all my
old schoolfellows. He is the endless bun-eating, ball-throwing
animal that we have all been."
"That is only you absurd boys," said Diana. "I don't believe
any girl was ever so silly, and I'm sure no girl was ever
so happy, except--" and she stopped.
"I will tell you the truth about Innocent Smith," said Michael Moon in a
low voice. "Dr. Warner has gone to look for him in vain. He is not there.
Haven't you noticed that we never saw him since we found ourselves?
He was an astral baby born on all four of us; he was only our own
youth returned. Long before poor old Warner had clambered out of his cab,
the thing we called Smith had dissolved into dew and light on this lawn.
Once or twice more, by the mercy of God, we may feel the thing,
but the man we shall never see. In a spring garden before breakfast
we shall smell the smell called Smith. In the snapping of brisk twigs
in tiny fires we shall hear a noise named Smith. Everything insatiable
and innocent in the grasses that gobble up the earth like babies at a bun feast,
in the white mornings that split the sky as a boy splits up white firwood,
we may feel for one instant the presence of an impetuous purity;
but his innocence was too close to the unconsciousness of inanimate things
not to melt back at a mere touch into the mild hedges and heavens; he--"
He was interrupted from behind the house by a bang like that of a bomb.
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