challenged the terrors of this world, and found them sawdust--he would
say "damn" as often as he pleased. "Damn, damn, damn, damn," he
whispered, and marked again, with meditative eye, the space from wall to
screen.

After this, greatly cheered, he bethought him of the Square. Last night
his friend had said to him that when he wished to think of him, and go
back for a time to the other world, a peep into the Square would assist
him. He clambered up on to the window-seat, caught behind him those
sounds, "Now, Master Ernest," which he now definitely connected with
condemnation and disapproval, shook his curls in defiance, and pressed
his nose to the glass. The Square was a dazzling sight. He had not as
yet names for any of the things that he saw there, nor, when he went out
on his magnificent daily progress in his perambulator did he associate
the things that he found immediately around him with the things that he
saw from his lofty window; but, with every absorbed gaze they stood more
securely before him, and were fixed ever more firmly in his memory.

This was a Square with fine, white, lofty houses, and in the houses were
an infinite number of windows, sometimes gay and sometimes glittering.
In the middle of the Square was a garden, and in the middle of the
garden, very clearly visible from Ernest Henry's window, was a fountain.
It was this fountain, always tossing and leaping, that gave Ernest Henry
the key to his memories. Gazing at it he had no difficulty at all to
find himself back in the old life. Even now, although only two years had
passed, it was difficult not to reveal his old experiences by means of
terms of his new discoveries. He thought, for instance, of the fountain
as a door that led into the country whose citizen he had once been, and
that country he saw now in terms of doors and passages and rooms and
windows, whereas, in reality, it had been quite otherwise.