Sunlight! He had never known how much it meant,
until then. He breathed deep. His dark eyes closed. Life, which he
had hitherto valued only through sheer animal instinct, seemed to mean
so much more than he had ever imagined it could. Yet not in any
definite way, nor through contemplating any definite attainment. It
was simply good to be alive--to feel the pleasant, natural warmth of
the sun--to breathe the clear, keen air. And all his curiosity as to
what the world might look like--for to one who has come out of the
eternal shadows the world is ever strange--was drowned in the supreme
indifference of absolute ease and rest. It seemed to him as though he
were floating midway between the earth and the sun, not in a weird
dream wherein the subconscious mind says, "This is not real; I know
that I dream"; but actual, in that Pete could feel nothing above nor
beneath him. Being of a very practical turn of mind he straightway
opened his eyes and was at once conscious of the arm of the wheel-chair
beneath his hand and the blanket across his knees.
He was not aware that some of the patients were gazing at him
curiously--that gossip had passed his name from room to room and that
the papers had that morning printed a sort of revised sequel to the
original story of "The Spider Mystery"--as they chose to call it.
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