at the very first sight of that door experience a peculiar emotion,
an attraction, a desire to get to the door and open it and walk in.
And at the same time he had the clearest conviction that either it
was unwise or it was wrong of him--he could not tell which--to
yield to this attraction. He insisted upon it as a curious thing
that he knew from the very beginning--unless memory has played him
the queerest trick--that the door was unfastened, and that he could
go in as he chose.

I seem to see the figure of that little boy, drawn and
repelled. And it was very clear in his mind, too, though why it
should be so was never explained, that his father would be very
angry if he went through that door.

Wallace described all these moments of hesitation to me with
the utmost particularity. He went right past the door, and then,
with his hands in his pockets, and making an infantile attempt to
whistle, strolled right along beyond the end of the wall. There he
recalls a number of mean, dirty shops, and particularly that of a
plumber and decorator, with a dusty disorder of earthenware pipes,
sheet lead ball taps, pattern books of wall paper, and tins of
enamel. He stood pretending to examine these things, and coveting,
passionately desiring the green door.

Then, he said, he had a gust of emotion. He made a run for
it, lest hesitation should grip him again, he went plump with
outstretched hand through the green door and let it slam behind
him. And so, in a trice, he came into the garden that has haunted
all his life.