man dead and then take his scalp. He giggled at that,
because his father really didn't have any hairlock to take.

At that moment Mister decided to take off his specs and polish them with
his breast-pocket handkerchief. While he answered one of Mr. Crane's
questions, he let them dangle from his fingers. Accidentally, the lenses
were level with Jack's gaze. One careless glance was enough to jerk his
eyes back to them. One glance stunned him so that he could not at once
understand that what he was seeing was not reality.

There was his father across the room. But it wasn't a room. It was a
space outdoors under the low branch of a tree whose trunk was so big it
was as wide as the wall had been. Nor was the Persian rug there. It was
replaced by a close-cropped bright green grass. Here and there foot-high
flowers with bright yellow petals tipped in scarlet swayed beneath an
internal wind. Close to Mr. Crane's feet a white horse no larger than a
fox terrier bit off the flaming end of a plant.

All those things were wonderful enough--but was that naked giant who
sprawled upon a moss-covered boulder father? No! Yes! Though the
features were no longer pinched and scored and pale, though they were
glowing and tanned and smooth like a young athlete's they were his
father's! Even the thick, curly hair that fell down over a wide forehead
and the panther-muscled body could not hide his identity.

Though it tore at his nerves, and though he was afraid that once he
looked away he would never again seize the vision, Jack ripped his gaze
away from the rosy view.

The descent to the grey and rasping reality was so painful that tears
ran down his cheeks, and he gasped as if struck in the pit of the
stomach. How could beauty like that be all around him without his
knowing it?

He felt that he had been blind all his life until this moment and would
be forever eyeless again, an unbearable forever, if he did not look
through the glass again.

He stole another hurried glance, and the pain in his heart and stomach
went away, his insides became wrapped in a soft wind. He was lifted. He
was floating, a pale red, velvety air caressed him and buoyed him.

He saw his mother run from around the tree. That should have seemed
peculiar, because he had thought she was dead. But there she was, no
longer flat-walking and coughing and thin and wax-skinned, but
golden-brown and curvy and bouncy. She jumped at Daddy and gave him a
long kiss. Daddy di