She looked back at her own fatherless years--remembering but as a dream the father whom she had last seen on her birthday, when she was three years old--and when a woman in whose rustic cottage she had been living for what seemed a long time, took her to the nursing home where the fading poet was lying on a sofa in a garden. It was to be her birthday treat to visit "poor Papa, who would be sure to have something pretty for her." But the poet had no birthday gift for his only child. He had been too ill to think much about anything but his own weakness and pain. He had not remembered his little girl's third anniversary. He could only give her kisses, and sighs and tears; and she clung to him fondly, and said again and again: "Poor Papa, poor Papa!" Kind Mrs. Humphries, of the pretty rose-covered cottage, had told her that Papa was ill, and had taught her to pray for him. "Please God, bless poor Papa, and make him well again." The prayer was not answered, and that spectral face, beautiful even on the brink of the grave, was all she could remember of a father. And then had come the long, slow years with Grannie, who had been kind after her lights, but who required the subjugation of almost all childish impulses and inclinations. Long years in which Vera had to amuse herself in silence, and play no games that involved running about a room, or disturbing things. She had been surrounded by things that she must not touch; and her rare toys, the occasional gifts of aunts and cousins, were objects of reprobation if they were ever left on a chair or a table where they could offend Grannie's eye. The winter season, when there was only one habitable room, was terrible; for then Grannie was always there, and to play was impossible. She could only sit on a hassock in her favourite corner and look at old story books, too painfully familiar; and if she began to sing or to talk to herself, there came a reproachful murmur from Grannie's sofa: "My dear child, do you think I have no nerves?" The summer was better, for she could play in the second-floor bedroom, which she shared with Lidcott, a room with three windows upon which the sun beat fiercely, but where she could talk to her dolls, and sing them to sleep, and do anything except run about, as she had always to remember that every step would beat like a hammer upon poor Grannie's head. And in these years Giulia, who was within a few months of her own age, was being indulged with everything that could make the bliss of childhood, in the loveliest country in the world, and then, as she grew into a thinking, reasonable being, she had been her father's dearest companion, his distraction after the dull round of business, his choicest recreation, his unfailing delight. It was worth while to die young after such a childhood, Vera thought.