But, no, I do not think I can have desired the experience, for to this day I cherish a lively recollection of the agony of sick horror which swam over me when, in obedience to instructions given, I suffered my lips to touch the marble-like face of the dead girl. How strange is that unquestioning obedience of childhood! Recognition of it might well give pause to careless instructors of youth. The kiss meant torture to me, in anticipation and in fact. But I was bidden, and never dreamed of refusing to obey. No doubt, there was also at work in me some dim sort of infantile delicacy. This was an occasion upon which a gentleman could have no choice.... Ah, well, I believe Amelia was a dear good soul, and I am sure I hope she married well, and lived happily ever after. I have no recollection whatever of how or when she drifted out of my life. But the visit to Jinny's deathbed, and the exciting leaps from the immeasurably long kitchen table into Amelia's print-clad arms, are things which stand out rather more clearly in my recollection than many of the events of, say, twenty years later. II How is it that my earliest recollections should centre about folk no nearer or dearer to me than domestic servants? I know that my mother died within three months of my birth. There had to be, and was, another woman in my life before Amelia; but I have no memories of her. She was an aunt, an unmarried sister of my mother's; but I believe my father quarrelled with her before I began to 'take notice' very much; and then came Amelia. The large underground kitchen really was fairly big. I had a look at it no more than a dozen years ago. The house, too, was and is a not unpleasing one, situated within a stone's throw of Russell Square, Bloomsbury. Its spaces are ample, its fittings solidly good, and its area less subterranean than many. Near by is a select livery stable and mews of sub-rural aspect, with Virginia creeper climbing over a horse's head in stucco. Amelia shared with me a night nursery and a nursery-living room in this house, the latter overlooking the mews, through the curving iron rails of a tiny balcony. Below us my father occupied a small bedroom and a large sitting-room, the latter being the 'first floor front.'