On the hot night through whose first hours Judith lay panting in
her corner of the room, tormented and kept awake by the constant
roar and rush and flash of lights, she was trying to go to sleep
in the hope of leaving all the heat and noise and discomfort
behind, and reaching Aunt Hester. If she could fall awake she
would feel and hear none of it. It would all be unreal and she
would know that only the lightness and the air like flowers and
the lovely brightness were true. Once, as she tossed on her
cot-bed, she broke into a low little laugh to think how untrue
things really were and how strange it was that people did not
understand--that even she felt as she lay in the darkness that
she could not get away. And she could not get away unless the
train would stop just long enough to let her fall asleep. If she
could fall asleep between the trains, she would not awaken. But
they came so quickly one after the other. Her hair was damp as
she pushed it from her forehead, the bed felt hot against her
skin, the people in the next flat quarreled more angrily, Judith
heard a loud slap, and then the woman began to cry. She was a
young married woman, scarcely more than a girl. Her marriage had
not been as successful as that of Judith's parents. Both husband
and wife had irritable tempers. Through the thin wall Judith
could hear the girl sobbing angrily as the man flung himself out
of bed, put on his clothes and went out, banging the door after
him.

"She doesn't know," the child whispered eerily, "that it isn't
real at all."

There was in her strange little soul a secret no one knew the
existence of. It was a vague belief that she herself was not