“You’re Mason secundus now,” he said more quickly. “I know that. But--can you remember nothing of the Other Places? Have you quite forgotten when--we were together?”
He stopped abruptly, repeating the last three words almost beneath his breath. His eyes rested on mine with such pleasure and expectancy in them that for the moment the world I stood in melted out, the playground faded, the shouts of cricket ceased, and I seemed to forget entirely who or where I was. It was as though other times, other feelings, other scenery battled against the actual present, claiming me, sweeping me away, extending the sense of personal identity towards a previous series. Seductive the sensation was beyond belief, yet at the same time disturbing. I wholly ignored the flattery of this kindness from an older boy. A series of vivid pictures, more familiar than the nursery, more distant than a dream of years ago, swam up from some inner region of my being like memories of places, people, adventures I had actually lived and seen. The near presence of Julius LeVallon drew them upwards in a stream above the horizon of some temporarily veiled oblivion.
“... in the Other Places,” his voice continued with a droning sound that was like the sea a long way off, or like wind among the branches of a tree.
And something in me leaped automatically to acknowledge the truth I suddenly realised.
“Yes, yes!” I cried, no shyness in me any more, and plunged into myself to seize the flying pictures and arrest their sliding, disappearing motion. “I remember, oh, I remember ... a whole lot of ... dreams ... or things like made-up adventures I once had ages and ages ago ... with ...” I hesitated a second. A rising and inexplicable excitement stopped my words. I was shaking all over. “... with you!” I added boldly, or rather the words seemed to add themselves inevitably. “It was with you, sir?”
He nodded his head slightly and smiled. I think the “sir,” sounding so incongruous, caused the smile.
“Yes,” he said in his soft, low voice, “it was with me. Only they were not dreams. They were real. There’s no good denying what’s real; it only prevents your remembering properly.”
The way he said it held conviction as of sunrise, but anyhow denial in myself seemed equally to have disappeared. Deep within me a sense of reality answered willingly to his own.