stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of
existence. It seemed as if there were experience in this dawning being.
Did he, perchance, already exercise judgment? Experience coming too
early constructs, sometimes, in the obscure depths of a child's mind,
some dangerous balance--we know not what--in which the poor little soul
weighs God.

Feeling himself innocent, he yielded. There was no complaint--the
irreproachable does not reproach.

His rough expulsion drew from him no sign; he suffered a sort of
internal stiffening. The child did not bow under this sudden blow of
fate, which seemed to put an end to his existence ere it had well begun;
he received the thunderstroke standing.

It would have been evident to any one who could have seen his
astonishment unmixed with dejection, that in the group which abandoned
him there was nothing which loved him, nothing which he loved.

Brooding, he forgot the cold. Suddenly the wave wetted his feet--the
tide was flowing; a gust passed through his hair--the north wind was
rising. He shivered. There came over him, from head to foot, the shudder
of awakening.

He cast his eyes about him.

He was alone.

Up to this day there had never existed for him any other men than those
who were now in the hooker. Those men had just stolen away.