From that morning began a strange acquaintance that certainly could not be called a friendship. There could be no question at all that Mary was terrified of Sarah; there could also be no question that Mary was Sarah's obedient slave. The cynical Hortense, prepared as she was for anything strange and unexpected in Sarah's actions, was, nevertheless, puzzled now. One afternoon, wet and dismal, the two of them sitting in a little box of a room in the little box of a house, Sarah huddled in a chair, her eyes staring in front of her, Hortense sewing, her white, bony fingers moving sharply like knives, the maid asked a question: "What do you see--Sar-ah--in that infant?" "What infant?" asked Sarah, without moving her eyes. "That Mary with whom now you always are." "We play games together," said Sarah. "You do not. You may be playing a game--she does nothing. She is terrified--out of her life." "She is very silly. It's funny how silly she is. I like her to be frightened." Mary's nurse told Mary's mother that, in her opinion, Sarah was not a nice child. But Sarah had been invited to tea at the confused, simple abode of the Kitson family, and had behaved perfectly. "I think you must be wrong, nurse," said Mrs. Kitson. "She seems a very nice little girl. Mary needs companions. It's good for her to be taken out of herself." Had Mrs. Kitson been of a less confused mind, however, had she had more time for the proper observation of her daughter, she would have noticed her daughter's pale cheeks, her daughter's fits of crying, her daughter's silences. Even as the bird is fascinated by the snake, so was Mary Kitson fascinated by Sarah Trefusis. "You are torturing that infant," said Hortense, and Sarah smiled. IV Mary was by no means the first of Sarah's victim's. There had been many others. Utterly aloof, herself, from all emotions of panic or terror, it had, from the very earliest age, interested her to see those passions at work in others. Cruelty for cruelty's sake had no interest for her at all; to pull the wings from flies, to tie kettles to the tails of agitated puppies, to throw stones at cats, did not, in the least, amuse her. She had once put a cat in the fire, but only because she had seen it play with a terrified mouse. That had affronted her sense of justice. But she was gravely and quite dispassionately interested in the terror of Mary Kitson. In later life a bull fight was to appear to her a tiresome affair, but the domination of one human being over another, absorbing. She had, too, at the very earliest age, that conviction that it was pleasant to combat all sentiment, all appeals to be "good," all soft emotions of pity, anything that could suggest that Right was of more power than Might. It was as though she said, "You may think that even now you will get me. I tell you I'm a rebel from the beginning; you'll never catch me showing affection or sympathy. If you do you may do your worst."