It was the afternoon of the eventful day on which he had recovered his father after those three lonely years that he first saw the child. Together his father and he had spent the morning hours, having the house to themselves. After lunch his father, exhausted with the emotions of the meeting, had gone to his room to rest, leaving Paul to meander through a dream world of his own as his fingers wandered softly over the keyboard of the piano. Thus wandering, with face turned toward his father’s room, the boy became conscious of the lightest of light fingers touching his arm. Startled, he swung about upon his stool, and there beheld a pair of the bluest of blue eyes, looking fixedly into his through a tangle of curls richly golden. The face made him think at once of the child in a Madonna picture which he remembered his mother to have shown him long ago. The eyes in the picture had the same far away, other-worldly look as the eyes staring so fixedly at him. Hardly daring to breathe, he smiled into the blue eyes, pouring into his smile the utmost magic of his fascination. But the blue eyes gazed, unwinking, unchanging, into his. “Hello, baby,” he said softly, as if fearing to break a spell. “Who are you?” At once the little hands were lifted up high, while over the face ran rippling waves of light and laughter. “You are a ripping baby,” said the boy, lifting her to his knee. Immediately the little hands went wandering over his face like little gentle living things, poking into mouth and eyes and ears, while from the baby lips came flowing in a gurgling stream the most exquisitely melodious sounds that had ever fallen upon the boy’s ears. “Well, you are a darling,” said Paul. “But where in the world do you come from?” He glanced into his father’s room and seeing that he was asleep he picked up the baby in his arms and went out into the garden at the back of the house. There upon the grass he lay, playing with the gurgling babe.