Читать книгу The Complete Works of Algernon Blackwood. Novels, Short Stories, Horror Classics, Occult & Supernatural Tales, Plays онлайн

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"How brilliant they are to-night," said the governess, after watching the boy attentively for some minutes as they lay side by side in the great forked branch. "I never saw the constellations so clear."

"But they have so little shape," he answered dreamily; "if we wore lights when we flew about we should make much better constellations than they do."

"The Big and Little Child instead of the Big and Little Bear," she laughed, still watching him.

"I'm slipping away——" he began, and then stopped suddenly. He saw the expression of his companion's eyes, which were looking him through and through with the most poignant love and yearning mingled in their gaze, and something clutched at his heart that he could not understand.

"——not slipping out of the tree," he went on vaguely, "but slipping into some new place or condition. I don't understand it. Am I—going off somewhere—where you can't follow? I thought suddenly—I was losing you."

The governess smiled at him sadly and said nothing. She stroked his wings and then raised them to her lips and kissed them. Jimbo watched her, and folded his other wing across into her hands; he felt unhappy, and his heart began to swell within him; but he didn't know what to say, and the Older Self began slowly to fade away again.