SIMON (_distressed_). I can’t--there couldn’t--but never mind that. Tell me how you found her. MRS. MORLAND. It was the twentieth day after she disappeared. Twenty days! SIMON. Some boat----? MR. MORLAND. There was no boat but mine. SIMON. Tell me. MRS. MORLAND. The search had long been given up, but we couldn’t come away. MR. MORLAND. I was wandering one day along the shore of the loch, you can imagine in what state of mind. I stopped and stood looking across the water at the island, and, Simon, I saw her sitting on the tree-trunk sketching. MRS. MORLAND. Mary Rose! MR. MORLAND. She waved to me and went on sketching. I--I waved back to her. I got into the boat and rowed across just in the old way, except that I sat facing her, so that I could see her all the time. When I landed, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Why did you row in that funny way, Dad?’ Then I saw at once that she didn’t know anything had happened. SIMON. Mr. Morland! How could--? Where did she say she had been? MRS. MORLAND. She didn’t know she had been anywhere, Simon. MR. MORLAND. She thought I had just come for her at the usual time. SIMON. Twenty days. You mean she had been on the island all that time? MR. MORLAND. We don’t know. MRS. MORLAND. James brought her back to me just the same merry unselfconscious girl, with no idea that she had been away from me for more than an hour or two. SIMON. But when you told her---- MRS. MORLAND. We never told her; she doesn’t know now. SIMON. Surely you---- MRS. MORLAND. We had her back again, Simon; that was the great thing. At first we thought to tell her after we got her home; and then, it was all so inexplicable, we were afraid to alarm her, to take the bloom off her. In the end we decided never to tell her. SIMON. You told no one? MR. MORLAND. Several doctors. SIMON. How did they explain it? MR. MORLAND. They had no explanation for it except that it never took place. You can think that, too, if you like. SIMON. I don’t know what to think. It has had no effect on her, at any rate. MR. MORLAND. None whatever--and you can guess how we used to watch. MRS. MORLAND. Simon, I am very anxious to be honest with you. I have sometimes thought that our girl is curiously young for her age--as if--you know how just a touch of frost may stop the growth of a plant and yet leave it blooming--it has sometimes seemed to me as if a cold finger had once touched my Mary Rose. SIMON. Mrs. Morland! MRS. MORLAND. There is nothing in it. SIMON. What you are worrying about is just her innocence--which seems a holy thing to me. MRS. MORLAND. And indeed it is. SIMON. If that is all---- MR. MORLAND. We have sometimes thought that she had momentary glimpses back into that time, but before we could question her in a cautious way about them the gates had closed and she remembered nothing. You never saw her talking to--to some person who wasn’t there? SIMON. No.