Doris listened. She could not hear what Mary said, but presently peace reigned above-stairs and the pelting storm and the book resumed their power. It might have been a half hour later when she heard soft, stealthy footsteps in the hall. She sat quite still, believing that one of the children was hiding and that the other would be on the trail immediately. The small intruder passed through the library and went into the sunken room. Doris, herself unseen, looked from behind her shelter and saw that it was Joan, and before she could call to her she was held silent by what the child proceeded to do. Deftly, quickly she disrobed and stood in her pretty, childish nakedness in the warm room. For a moment she poised and listened, then she stepped over the rim of the fountain, took the exact attitude of one of the figures, and with rapt, upturned face became rigid. It was wonderfully lovely, but decidedly startling. Still Doris waited. The water dripped over the small body; Joan's lips were moving in some weird incantation, and then with the light all gone from her pretty face she came out of the basin, pulled her clothing on as best she could, and flung herself tragically in a deep chair. For a moment Doris thought the child was crying, but she was not. Her limp little body relaxed and the eyes were sad. Doris rose and went to the steps. "Why are you here alone, Joan?" she asked. Quite simple the reply came: "I was--trying to make it come true, Auntie Dorrie," this with a suspicious break in the voice. "What, darling?" Doris came down and took the child in her arms. "Mary says if you believe anything hard enough you can make it come true. _She_ always can! I wanted to play with the fountain girls--I know it would be beautiful--but you have to be _like them_. You have to shut the whole world out--and then you know what they know." "Why, little girl, do you think the fountain children are happier than you and Nancy?" With that groping that all mothers feel when they first confront the _individual_ in the child they believed they knew Doris asked her question. "I've used Nancy and me all up!" was Joan's astonishing reply. "All up?" the two meaningless words were the most that Doris could grasp. "Yes, Aunt Dorrie. Dolls and Mary's silly stories and Nancy's funny games all over and over and over until they make me--sick!" Joan actually looked sick, so intense was she. "Nan is happy always, Aunt Dorrie--she's made like that--but I use things up and then I want something else. Mary said that, honest true, things would come if you believed hard enough. Maybe I cannot believe hard enough--or maybe Mary didn't speak truth. She doesn't always, Aunt Dorrie." Doris gasped and drew the child closer. It was like being dragged, by the little hand, to an unsuspected danger that she, not the child, understood.