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--