And no leaf hangs for me in the forest; I shall lift no stone upon the hills; I shall find no door in any city.
But in the city of myself, upon the continent of my soul, I shall find the forgotten language, the lost world, a door where I may enter, and music strange as any ever sounded; I shall haunt you, ghost, along the labyrinthine ways until — until?
O Ben, my ghost, an answer?”
But as he spoke, the phantom years scrolled up their vision, and only the eyes of Ben burned terribly in darkness, without an answer.
And day came, and the song of waking birds, and the Square, bathed in the young pearl light of morning.
And a wind stirred lightly in the Square, and, as he looked, Ben, like a fume of smoke, was melted into dawn.
And the angels on Gant’s porch were frozen in hard marble silence, and at a distance life awoke, and there was a rattle of lean wheels, a slow clangor of shod hoofs.
And he heard the whistle wail along the river.
Yet, as he stood for the last time by the angels of his father’s porch, it seemed as if the Square already were far and lost; or, I should say, he was like a man who stands upon a hill above the town he has left, yet does not say “The town is near,” but turns his eyes upon the distant soaring ranges.