night of her life, when the dark came and the lamp illuminated the
writhing limbs, the falling bodies, the tottering walls. From the
windows the Square was visible, and at the windows Angelina spent a
great deal of her time, but her present nurse--nurses succeeded one
another with startling frequency--objected to what she called
"window-gazing." "Makes a child dreamy," she said; "lowers her spirits."

Angelina was, naturally, a dreamy child, and no amount of nurses could
prevent her being one. She was dreamy because her loneliness forced her
to be so, and if her dreams were the most real part of her day to her
that was surely the faults of her aunts. But she was not at all a quick
child; although to-day was her third birthday she could not talk very
well, could not pronounce her r's, and lisped in what her trail of
nurses told her was a ridiculous fashion for so big a girl. But, then,
she was not really a big girl; her figure was short and stumpy, her
features plain and pale with the pallor of her first Indian year. Her
eyes were large and black and rather fine.

On this morning she lay in bed, and knew that she was excited because
her friend had come the night before and told her that to-day would be
an important day. Angelina clung, with a desperate tenacity, to her
memories of everything that happened to her before her arrival on this
unpleasant planet. Those memories now were growing faint, and they came
to her only in flashes, in sudden twists and turns of the scene, as
though she were surrounded by curtains and, every now and then, was
allowed a peep through. Her friend had been with her continually at
first, and, whilst he had been there, the old life had been real and
visible enough; but on her second birthday he had told her that it was
right now that she should manage by herself. Since then, he had come
when she least expected him; sometimes when she had needed him very