"Yes, a story. And a history of philosophy. Or something like that."
"Aren't you going to open the package from me?"
Hilde didn't want to be unfair, so she opened her mother's present right away. It was a gold bracelet.
"It's lovely, Mom! Thank you very much!"
Hilde got out of bed and gave her mother a hug.
They sat talking for a while.
Then Hilde said, "I have to get back to the book, Mom. Right now he's standing on top of the Acropolis."
"Who is?"
"I've no idea. Neither has Sophie. That's the whole point."
"Well, I have to get to work. Don't forget to eat something. Your dress is on a hanger downstairs."
Finally her mother disappeared down the stairs. So did Sophie's philosophy teacher; he walked down the steps from the Acropolis and stood on the Areopagos rock before appearing a little later in the old square of Athens.
Hilde shivered when the old buildings suddenly rose from the ruins. One of her father's pet ideas had been to let all the United Nations countries collaborate in reconstructing an exact copy of the Athenian square. It would be the forum for philosophical discussion and also for disarmament talks. He felt that a giant project like that would forge world unity. "We have, after all, succeeded in building oil rigs and moon rockets."
Then she read about Plato. "The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body ..."
Sophie had crawled through the hedge and followed Hermes, but the dog had escaped her. After having read about Plato, she had gone farther into the woods and come upon the red cabin by the little lake. Inside hung a painting of Bjerkely. From the description it was clearly meant to be Hilde's Bjerkely. But there was also a portrait of a man named Berkeley. "How odd!"
Hilde laid the heavy ring binder aside on the bed and went over to her bookshelf and looked him up in the three-volume encyclopedia she had been given on her fourteenth birthday. Here he was--Berkeley!
Berkeley, George, 1685-1753, Eng. Philos., Bishop of Cloyne. Denied existence of a material world beyond the human mind. Our sense perceptions proceed from God. Main work: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).
Yes, it was decidedly odd. Hilde stood thinking for a few seconds before going back to bed and the ring binder.
In one way, it was her father who had hung the two pictures on the wall. Could there be any connection other than the similarity of names?
Berkeley was a philosopher who denied the existence of a material world beyond the human mind. That was certainly very strange, one had to admit. But it was not easy to disprove such claims, either. As regards Sophie, it fitted very well. After all, Hilde's father was respon-sible for her "sense perceptions."
Well, she would know more if she read on. Hilde looked up from the ring binder and smiled when she got to the point where Sophie discovers the reflection of a girl who winks with both eyes. "The other girl had winked at Sophie as if to say: I can see you, Sophie. I am here, on the other side."
Sophie finds the green wallet in the cabin as well-- with the money and everything! How could it have made its way there?
Absurd! For a second or two Hilde had really believed that Sophie had found it. But then she tried to imagine how the whole thing must appear to Sophie. It must all seem quite inscrutable and uncanny.
For the first time Hilde felt a strong desire to meet Sophie face to face. She felt like telling her the real truth about the whole business.
But now Sophie had to get out of the cabin before she was caught red-handed. The boat was adrift on the lake, of course. (Her father couldn't resist reminding her of that old story, could he!