“It must have been your bell,” she said. “I heard one of them go past me in trouble when I was coming down. They’re shy—so shy even with me.” She turned her face over her shoulder and cried again: “Children! Oh, children! Look and see!” “They must have gone off together on their own affairs,” I suggested, for there was a murmur behind us of lowered voices broken by the sudden squeaking giggles of childhood. I returned to my tinkerings and she leaned forward, her chin on her hand, listening interestedly. “How many are they?” I said at last. The work was finished, but I saw no reason to go. Her forehead puckered a little in thought. “I don’t quite know,” she said simply. “Sometimes more—sometimes less. They come and stay with me because I love them, you see.” “That must be very jolly,” I said, replacing a drawer, and as I spoke I heard the inanity of my answer. “You—you aren’t laughing at me,” she cried. “I—I haven’t any of my own. I never married. People laugh at me sometimes about them because—because———” “Because they’re savages,” I returned. “It’s nothing to fret for. That sort laugh at everything that isn’t in their own fat lives.” “I don’t know. How should I? I only don’t like being laughed at about _them_. It hurts; and when one can’t see…. I don’t want to seem silly,” her chin quivered like a child’s as she spoke, “but we blindies have only one skin, I think. Everything outside hits straight at our souls. It’s different with you. You’ve such good defences in your eyes—looking out—before anyone can really pain you in your soul. People forget that with us.” I was silent reviewing that inexhaustible matter—the more than inherited (since it is also carefully taught) brutality of the Christian peoples, beside which the mere heathendom of the West Coast nigger is clean and restrained. It led me a long distance into myself. “Don’t do that!” she said of a sudden, putting her hands before her eyes. “What?” She made a gesture with her hand. “That! It’s—it’s all purple and black. Don’t! That colour hurts.” “But, how in the world do you know about colours?” I exclaimed, for here was a revelation indeed. “Colours as colours?” she asked. “No. _Those_ Colours which you saw just now.” “You know as well as I do,” she laughed, “else you wouldn’t have asked that question. They aren’t in the world at all. They’re in _you_—when you went so angry.” “D’you mean a dull purplish patch, like port-wine mixed with ink?” I said. “I’ve never seen ink or port-wine, but the colours aren’t mixed. They are separate—all separate.” “Do you mean black streaks and jags across the purple?” She nodded. “Yes—if they are like this,” and zigzagged her finger again, “but it’s more red than purple—that bad colour.” “And what are the colours at the top of the—whatever you see?” Slowly she leaned forward and traced on the rug the figure of the Egg itself.