myself. I thought I must be badly hurt; I bowed my reeling head in
my arms, and began to sob like a kid, out loud, and without shame.
But somehow I forgot about the big brute, and his face that I wanted
to pound; instead, I was ashamed and bewildered, a queer hysterical
state with a half dozen emotions mixed up. The Caligari story was in
it, and the lunatic asylum; I've got a cracked skull, I thought, and
my mind will never get right again! I sat, huddled and shuddering;
until suddenly I felt a quiet hand on my shoulder, and heard a
gentle voice saying: "Don't be afraid. It is I."

Now, I shall waste no time telling you how amazed I was. It was a
long time before I could believe what was happening to me; I thought
I was clean off my head. I lifted my eyes, and there, in the aisle
of the most decorous church of St. Bartholomew, standing with his
hand on my head, was the figure out of the stained glass window! I
looked at him twice, and then I looked at the window. Where the
figure had been was a great big hole with the sun shining through!

We know the power of suggestion, and especially when one taps the
deeps of the unconscious, where our childhood memories are buried. I
had been brought up in a religious family, and so it seemed quite
natural to me that while that hand lay on my head, the throbbing and
whirling should cease, and likewise the fear. I became perfectly
quiet, and content to sit under the friendly spell. "Why were you
crying?" asked the voice, at last.

I answered, hesitatingly, "I think it was humiliation."

"Is it something you have done?"