quite real--or that she did not belong to the life she had been
born into. Her mother and father loved her and she loved them,
but sometimes she was on the brink of telling them that she could
not stay long--that some mistake had been made. What mistake--or
where was she to go to if she went, she did not know. She used to
catch her breath and stop herself and feel frightened when she
had been near speaking of this fantastic thing. But the building
full of workmen's flats, the hot room, the Elevated Railroad, the
quarrelling people, were all a mistake. Just once or twice in her
life she had seen places and things which did not seem so
foreign. Once, when she had been taken to the Park in the Spring,
she had wandered away from her mother to a sequestered place
among shrubs and trees, all waving tender, new pale green, with
the leaves a few early hot days had caused to rush out and
tremble unfurled. There had been a stillness there and scents and
colours she knew. A bird had come and swung upon a twig quite
near her and, looking at her with bright soft full eyes, had sung
gently to her, as if he were speaking. A squirrel had crept up
onto her lap and had not moved when she stroked it. Its eyes had
been full and soft also, and she knew it understood that she
could not hurt it. There was no mistake in her being among the
new fair greenness, and the woodland things who spoke to her.
They did not use words, but no words were needed. She knew what
they were saying. When she had pushed her way through the
greenness of the shrubbery to the driveway she had found herself
quite near to an open carriage, which had stopped because the
lady who sat in it was speaking to a friend on the path. She was
a young woman, dressed in delicate spring colours, and the little
girl at her side was dressed in white cloth, and it was at the
little girl Judith found herself gazing. Under her large white