released in him, very quietly.
What is it? he said, almost in a whisper, and he passed his hand over
his forehead. I almost feel as if I were alive!
I do not know enough about the wonderfulness of undiscovered things to
be able to explain how this had happened to him. Neither does anyone
else yet. He did not understand at all himself but he remembered this
strange hour months afterward when he was at Misselthwaite again and he
found out quite by accident that on this very day Colin had cried out
as he went into the secret garden:
I am going to live forever and ever and ever!
The singular calmness remained with him the rest of the evening and he
slept a new reposeful sleep; but it was not with him very long. He did
not know that it could be kept. By the next night he had opened the
doors wide to his dark thoughts and they had come trooping and rushing
back. He left the valley and went on his wandering way again. But,
strange as it seemed to him, there were minutes sometimes
half-hours when, without his knowing why, the black burden seemed to
lift itself again and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one.
Slowly slowly for no reason that he knew of he was coming alive with
the garden.
As the golden summer changed into the deep golden autumn he went to the
Lake of Como. There he found the loveliness of a dream. He spent his
days upon the crystal blueness of the lake or he walked back into the
soft thick verdure of the hills and tramped until he was tired so that
he might sleep. But by this time he had begun to sleep better, he knew,
and his dreams had ceased to be a terror to him.
Perhaps, he thought, my body is growing stronger.
It was growing stronger but because of the rare peaceful hours when his
thoughts were changed his soul was slowly growing stronger, too. He
began to think of Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not go home.
Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and asked himself what
he should feel when he went and stood by the carved four-posted bed
again and looked down at the sharply chiseled ivory-white face while it
227