He did not understand at all himself--but he remembered this strange hour months afterward when he was at Misselthwaite again and he found out quite by accident that on this very day Colin had cried out as he went into the secret garden: "I am going to live forever and ever and ever!" The singular calmness remained with him the rest of the evening and he slept a new reposeful sleep; but it was not with him very long.

He did not know that it could be kept.

By the next night he had opened the doors wide to his dark thoughts and they had come trooping and rushing back.

He left the valley and went on his wandering way again.

But, strange as it seemed to him, there were minutes--sometimes half-hours--when, without his knowing why, the black burden seemed to lift itself again and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one.
Slowly--slowly--for no reason that he knew of--he was "coming alive" with the garden.
As the golden summer changed into the deep golden autumn he went to the Lake of Como.