“Another child might have forgotten them. I never shall. I—I was so little and they were full of something awful. It was loneliness. The first time Andrews pinched me was one day when the thing frightened me and I suddenly began to cry quite loud. I used to stare out of the window and—I don’t know when I noticed it first—I could see the children being taken out by their nurses. And there were always two or three of them and they laughed and talked and skipped. The nurses used to laugh and talk too. Andrews never did. When she took me to the gardens the other nurses sat together and chattered and their children played games with other children. Once a little girl began to talk to me and her nurse called her away. Andrews was very angry and jerked me by my arm and told me that if ever I spoke to a child again she would pinch me.” “Devil!” exclaimed the Frenchwoman. “I used to think and think, but I could never understand. How could I?” “A baby!” cried Mademoiselle Vallé and she got up and took her in her arms and kissed her. “_Chère petite ange!_” she murmured. When she sat down again her cheeks were wet. Robin’s were wet also, but she touched them with her handkerchief quickly and dried them. It was as if she had faltered for a moment in her lesson. “Did Dowie ever tell you anything about Donal?” she asked hesitatingly. “Something. He was the little boy you played with?” “Yes. He was the first human creature,” she said it very slowly as if trying to find the right words to express what she meant, “—the first _human_ creature I had ever known. You see Mademoiselle, he—he knew everything. He had always been happy, he _belonged_ to people and things. I belonged to nobody and nothing. If I had been like him he would not have seemed so wonderful to me. I was in a kind of delirium of joy. If a creature who had been deaf dumb and blind had suddenly awakened, and seeing on a summer day in a world full of flowers and sun—it might have seemed to them as it seemed to me.” “You have remembered it through all the years,” said Mademoiselle, “like that?” “It was the first time I became alive. One could not forget it. We only played as children play but—it _was_ a delirium of joy. I could not bear to go to sleep at night and forget it for a moment. Yes, I remember it—like that. There is a dream I have every now and then and it is more real than—than this is—” with a wave of her hand about her. “I am always in a real garden playing with a real Donal. And his eyes—his eyes—” she paused and thought, “There is a look in them that is like—it is just like—that first morning.” The change which passed over her face the next moment might have been said to seem to obliterate all trace of the childish memory.