ld speak a very little plainer, or if he could
see and hear the least bit more clearly, there would be no more
mystery. He thought they would say, 'Oscar, we are like you. We are
here because you are here. If you were not Oscar, we should not be
what we are. And if we were not here you could not speak, nor think,
nor be glad or sorry.' But they never did quite say this. Therefore
Oscar was not quite content, and he felt that he needed something, he
knew not what, more than the earth and the sea and the sky had given
him. They were so friendly to him that they made him long for a nearer
friendship still. He could not come closer to them; and if they could
not come closer to him, must not something be wrong? He found them
always fresh, and full of new things that never came to an end; they
were alive, but the life they had was not quite the same as his own
life. The world was so big that he could not put his arms round it and
hug it; it was calm and orderly, and although he could never get to
the end of the new things that were in it, yet he knew that every year
it was the same world that it had been before. It was not so with him;
for, in spite of his being always Oscar, he knew every day that he
never had been and never would be exactly the same Oscar that he was
at that moment. So the world was not only too big for him, but, in
another way, it was too small for him also. The world could live only
a year, after all, since one of its years was the same as another; but
Oscar felt that he could live innumerable years, because no one of his
years was the same as any other. Oh, if he could only find something
to love that would grow in the same way that he grew, and answer him
when he spoke, and be in all ways both as large and as small as he! Up
and down the shore Oscar wandered, and through the green shade of the
rustling forest, and with his eyes he sought amidst the clouds and the
stars, but the thing that he wanted he did not find.

When the rain came down too hard, Oscar would stay within the cottage,
and study his book, or watch his pearl-shell, or sometimes go into the
bedroom and look at the things his mother had left behind her. They
were very ordinary things, and there were very few of them; but they
were dearer to Oscar than anything else. Here was the jacket his
mother used to wear, and against which Oscar's face had often rested,
while she nursed him in her arms, or lulled him to sleep. It was full
of wrinkles