I must have been away for months, Perry, and now you barely look up
from your work when I return and insist that we have been separated
but a moment. Is that any way to treat a friend? I'm surprised
at you, Perry, and if I'd thought for a moment that you cared no
more for me than this I should not have returned to chance death
at the hands of the Mahars for your sake."
The old man looked at me for a long time before he spoke. There
was a puzzled expression upon his wrinkled face, and a look of hurt
sorrow in his eyes.
"David, my boy," he said, "how could you for a moment doubt my love
for you? There is something strange here that I cannot understand.
I know that I am not mad, and I am equally sure that you are not;
but how in the world are we to account for the strange hallucinations
that each of us seems to harbor relative to the passage of time
since last we saw each other. You are positive that months have
gone by, while to me it seems equally certain that not more than
an hour ago I sat beside you in the amphitheater. Can it be that
both of us are right and at the same time both are wrong? First
tell me what time is, and then maybe I can solve our problem. Do
you catch my meaning?"
I didn't and said so.
"Yes," continued the old man, "we are both right. To me, bent over
my book here, there has been no lapse of time. I have done little
or nothing to waste my energies and so have required neither food
nor sleep, but you, on the contrary, have walked and fought and
wasted strength and tissue which must needs be rebuilt by nutriment
and food, and so, having eaten and slept many times since last you
saw me you naturally measure the lapse of time largely by these acts.
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