"Wells, H G - The Door In The Wall, And Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

conflict and the fear.

"'And next?' I cried, and would have turned on, but the cool
hand of the grave woman delayed me.

"'Next?' I insisted, and struggled gently with her hand,
pulling up her fingers with all my childish strength, and as she
yielded and the page came over she bent down upon me like a shadow
and kissed my brow.

"But the page did not show the enchanted garden, nor the
panthers, nor the girl who had led me by the hand, nor the
playfellows who had been so loth to let me go. It showed a long
grey street in West Kensington, on that chill hour of afternoon
before the lamps are lit, and I was there, a wretched little
figure, weeping aloud, for all that I could do to restrain myself,
and I was weeping because I could not return to my dear
play-fellows who had called after me, 'Come back to us! Come back
to us soon!' I was there. This was no page in a book, but harsh
reality; that enchanted place and the restraining hand of the grave
mother at whose knee I stood had gone--whither have they gone?"

He halted again, and remained for a time, staring into the fire.

"Oh! the wretchedness of that return!" he murmured.

"Well?" I said after a minute or so.

"Poor little wretch I was--brought back to this grey world
again! As I realised the fulness of what had happened to me, I
gave way to quite ungovernable grief. And the shame and
humiliation of that public weeping and my disgraceful homecoming
remain with me still. I see again the benevolent-looking old
gentleman in gold spectacles who stopped and spoke to me--prodding
me first with his umbrella. 'Poor little chap,' said he; 'and are
you lost then?'--and me a London boy of five and more! And he must
needs bring in a kindly young policeman and make a crowd of me, and
so march me home. Sobbing, conspicuous and frightened, I came from
the enchanted garden to the steps of my father's house.

"That is as well as I can remember my vision of that
garden--the garden that haunts me still. Of course, I can convey
nothing of that indescribable quality of translucent unreality,
that difference from the common things of experience that hung
about it all; but that--that is what happened. If it was a dream,
I am sure it was a day-time and altogether extraordinary dream . .
. . . . H'm!--naturally there followed a terrible questioning, by
my aunt, my father, the nurse, the governess--everyone . . . . . .

"I tried to tell them, and my father gave me my first