above a door, under glass and in a black frame, hung a picture I knew well, my bird with the golden yellow hawk’s crest, forcing its way out of the sphere. Much moved, I remained standing. My heart felt glad and sorry, as if in that moment everything I had done and had experienced came back to me as answer and fulfillment. Like a lightning flash a crowd of pictures passed through my soul: my home, the house of my father, with the old stone crest over the arch of the door, the boy Demian drawing the crest, myself as a boy, fearsome under the evil spell of my enemy Kromer, myself, as a youth, at the table in my little room at school painting the bird of my dream, the soul caught in a web of its own weaving, and everything, everything up to this moment found echo in me again, and was confined, answered, approved.

With misty eyes I stared at my picture and read in the book of my soul. My glance dropped. In the open door under the picture of the bird stood a tall lady in a dark dress. It was she.

I could not utter a word. The beautiful woman smiled at me in a friendly way beneath features like her son’s, timeless and without age, full of an animated will. Her look was fulfillment, her greeting meant homecoming. In silence I stretched out my hands to her. She seized both mine with her strong, warm ones.

“You are Sinclair. I knew you at once. I am very glad to see you!”

Her voice was deep and warm, I drank it in like sweet wine. And now I looked up in her tranquil face, into the black eyes of unfathomable depth. I looked at her fresh, ripe mouth, queenly forehead, which bore the sign.

“How glad I am!” I said to her and kissed her hands. “I believe I have been on my way all my life long⁠—but now I have come home.”

She smiled in a motherly way.