autumn trees melted into one variegated band. A moment later they
came out on the ocean. And now on the water side were two other
streaks of color, one a spongy blue that was sky, another a clear
shining blue that was sea. Maida half-shut her eyes and the whole
world seemed to flash by in ribbons.

“May I get out for a moment, papa?” she asked suddenly in a thin
little voice. “I’d like to watch the waves.”

“All right,” her father answered briskly. To the chauffeur he said,
“Stop here, Henri.” To Maida, “Stay as long as you want, Posie.”

“Posie” was Mr. Westabrook’s pet-name for Maida.

Billy Potter jumped out and helped Maida to the ground. The three
men watched her limp to the sea-wall.

She was a child whom you would have noticed anywhere because of her
luminous, strangely-quiet, gray eyes and because of the ethereal
look given to her face by a floating mass of hair, pale-gold and
tendrilly. And yet I think you would have known that she was a sick
little girl at the first glance. When she moved, it was with a great
slowness as if everything tired her. She was so thin that her hands
were like claws and her cheeks scooped in instead of out. She was
pale, too, and somehow her eyes looked too big. Perhaps this was
because her little heart-shaped face seemed too small.

“You’ve got to find something that will take up her mind, Jerome,”
Dr. Pierce said, lowering his voice, “and you’ve got to be quick
about it. Just what Greinschmidt feared has come—that languor—that