He could say nothing; for the tenderness to all pain and all misery, the desire to make the horse happy and the cabman happy, had reached the point of a bizarre longing to take them to bed with him.

And that, he knew, was impossible.

For Stevie was not mad.

It was, as it were, a symbolic longing; and at the same time it was very distinct, because springing from experience, the mother of wisdom.

Thus when as a child he cowered in a dark corner scared, wretched, sore, and miserable with the black, black misery of the soul, his sister Winnie used to come along, and carry him off to bed with her, as into a heaven of consoling peace.