Instantly Barbara was trembling with excitement. She knew that the remark had been made to her and not at all to Miss Letts. Barbara entered once again, and instantly, upon the field of the passions. Here she was fated by her temperament to be in all cases a miserable victim, because panic, whether she were accepted or rejected by the object of her devotion, reduced her to incoherent foolishness; she could only be foolish now, and, although her heart beat like a leaping animal inside her, allowed Miss Letts to carry on the conversation. But Miss Letts's wandering eye hurt Mary's pride. She was not really interested in her, and once Mary had come to that conclusion about any one, complete, utter oblivion enveloped them. She perceived, however, Barbara's agitation, and at that, flattered and appeased, she was amiable again. There followed between the two a strangled and disconnected conversation. Mary began: "I've got four dolls at home." "Have you?" breathlessly from Barbara. By such slow accuracies as these are we conveyed, all our poor mortal days, from realism to romance, and with a shocking precipitance are we afterwards flung back, out of romance into realism, our natural home, again. "Yes--four dolls I have. My mother will give me another if I ask her. Would your mother?" "Yes," said Barbara, untruthfully. "That's my governess, Miss Marsh, there, with the green hat, that is. I've had her two months." "Yes," said Barbara, gazing with adoring eyes. "She's going away next week. There's another coming. I can do sums, can you?" "Yes," again from Barbara. "I can do up to twice-sixty-three. I'm nine. Miss Marsh says I'm clever." "I'm seven," said Barbara. "I could read when I was seven--long, long words. Can you read?" At this moment there arrived the green-hatted Miss Marsh, a plump, optimistic person, to whom Miss Letts was gloomily patronising. Miss Letts always distrusted stoutness in another; it looked like deliberate insult. Mary Adams was conveyed away; Barbara was bereft of her glory. But, rather, on that instant that Mary Adams vanished did she become glorified. Barbara had been too absurdly agitated to transform on to the mirror of her brain Mary's appearance. In all the dim-coloured splendour of flame and mist was Mary now enwrapped, with every step that Barbara took towards her home did the splendour grow. III Then followed an invitation to tea from Mary's mother. Barbara, preparing for the event, suffered her hair to be brushed, choked with strange half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation that comes from anticipated glories: half-sweet because things will, at their worst, be wonderful; half-terrible because we know that they will not be so good as we hope.