"No," Robin interrupted, "you always said, when I was older you'd tell me about the other people. I mean the other people _here_. The ones in the woods. The ones you can't see." Helen stared at the boy in blank disbelief. "What do you mean? There are no other people, just us." Then she recalled that every imaginative child invents playmates. _Alone_, she thought, _Robin's always alone, no other children, no wonder he's a little--strange._ She said, quietly, "You dreamed it, Robin." The boy only stared at her, in bleak, blank alienation. "You mean," he said, "you can't _hear_ them either?" He got up and walked out of the hut. Helen called, but he didn't turn back. She ran after him, catching at his arm, stopping him almost by force. She whispered, "Robin, Robin, tell me what you mean! There isn't anyone here. Once or twice I thought I had seen--something, by moonlight, only it was a dream. Please, Robin--please--" "If it's only a dream, why are you frightened?" Robin asked, through a curious constriction in his throat. "If they've never hurt you--" No, they had never hurt her. Even if, in her long-ago dream, one of them had come to her--_and the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair_--a scrap of memory from a vanished life on another world sang in Helen's thoughts. She looked up at the pale, impatient face of her son, and swallowed hard. Her voice was husky when she spoke. "Did I ever tell you about rationalization--when you want something to be true so much that you can make it sound right to yourself?" "Couldn't that also happen to something you wanted _not_ to be true?" Robin retorted with a mutinous curl of his mouth. Helen would not let go his arm. She begged, "Robin--no, you'll only waste your life and break your heart looking for something that doesn't exist--" The boy looked down into her shaken face, and suddenly a new emotion welled up in him and he dropped to his knees beside her and buried his face against her breast. He whispered, "Helen, I'll never leave you, I'll never do anything you don't want me to do, I don't want anyone but you--" And for the first time in many years, Helen broke into wild and uncontrollable crying, without knowing why she wept. Robin did not speak again of his quest in the forest. For many months he was quiet and subdued, staying near the clearing, hovering near Helen for days at a time, then disappearing into the forest at dusk. He heard the winds numbly, deaf to their promise and their call. Helen too was quiet and withdrawn, feeling Robin's alienation through his submissive mood. She found herself speaking to him sharply for being always under foot; yet, on the rare days when he vanished into the forest and did not return until after sunset, she felt a restless unease that set her wandering the paths herself, not following him, but simply uneasy unless she knew he was within call.