One doesn't, at that age, reason things out; one knows them, and is dumb, though unconvinced, before powerful syllogisms to the contrary. All children are so, confronted by strange phenomena. And yet I had facts to go upon if, child as I was, I had been capable of inference. I need only mention one. If this creature had been human, upon seeing that I was conscious of its behaviour to the rabbit, it would either have stopped the moment it perceived that I did not approve or was not amused, or it would have continued deliberately out of bravado. But it neither stopped nor hardily continued. It watched its experiment with interest for a little, then, finding me more interesting, did not discontinue it, but ceased to watch it. He went on with it mechanically, dreamingly, as if to the excitation of some other sense than sight, that of feeling, for instance. He went on lasciviously, for the sake of the pleasure so to be had. In other words, being without self-consciousness and ignorant of shame, he must have been non-human.
After all, too, it must be owned that I cannot have been confronted by the appearance for more than a few minutes. Allow me three to have been spent before I was aware of him, three more will be the outside I can have passed gazing at him. But I speak of "minutes," of course, referring to my ostensible self, that inert, apathetic child who followed its mother, that purblind creature through whose muddy lenses the pent immortal had been forced to see his familiar in the wood, and perchance to dress in form and body what, for him, needed neither to be visible. It was this outward self which was now driven by circumstances to resume command--the command which for "three minutes" by his reckoning he had relinquished. Both of us, no doubt, had been much longer there had we not been interrupted. A woodman, homing from his work, came heavily up the path, and like a guilty detected rogue I turned to run and took my incorruptible with me. Not until I had passed the man did I think to look back. The partner of my secret was not then to be seen. Out of sight out of mind is the way of children. Out of mind, then, withdrew my incorruptible. I hurried on, ran, and overtook my party half-way down the bare hillside. I still remember the feeling of relief with which I swept into the light, felt the cold air on my cheeks, and saw the intimacy of the village open out below me. I am almost sure that my eyes held tears at the assurance of the sweet, familiar things which I knew and could love. There, literally, were my own people: that which I had left behind must be unlawful because it was so strange. In the warmth and plenty of the lighted house, by the schoolroom table, before the cosily covered teapot, amid the high talk, the hot toast and the jam, my experience in the dusky wood seemed unreal, lawless, almost too terrible to be remembered--never, never to be named. It haunted me for many days, and gave rise to curious wonderings now and then. As I passed the patient, humble beasts of common experience--a carter's team nodding, jingling its brasses, a donkey, patient, humble, hobbled in a paddock, dogs sniffing each other, a cat tucked into a cottage window, I mused doubtfully and often whether we had touched the threshold of the heart of their mystery. But for the most part, being constitutionally timid, I was resolute to put the experience out of mind. When next I chanced to go through the wood there is no doubt I peered askance to right and left among the trees; but I took good care not to desert my companions. That which I had seen was unaccountable, therefore out of bounds. But though I never saw him there again I have never forgotten him.