rapidly away. She praised my manners to Lady Drew and to my mother,
who said she was glad to hear well of me, and after that I played with
Beatrice several times. The toys she had remain in my memory still as
great splendid things, gigantic to all my previous experience of toys,
and we even went to the great doll's house on the nursery landing to
play discreetly with that, the great doll's house that the Prince Regent
had given Sir Harry Drew's first-born (who died at five), that was a not
ineffectual model of Bladesover itself, and contained eighty-five dolls
and had cost hundreds of pounds. I played under imperious direction with
that toy of glory.

I went back to school when that holiday was over, dreaming of beautiful
things, and got Ewart to talk to me of love; and I made a great story
out of the doll's house, a story that, taken over into Ewart's hands,
speedily grew to an island doll's city all our own.

One of the dolls, I privately decided, was like Beatrice.

One other holiday there was when I saw something of her--oddly enough my
memory of that second holiday in which she played a part is vague--and
then came a gap of a year, and then my disgrace.

VIII

Now I sit down to write my story and tell over again things in their
order, I find for the first time how inconsecutive and irrational a
thing the memory can be. One recalls acts and cannot recall motives;
one recalls quite vividly moments that stand out inexplicably--things
adrift, joining on to nothing, leading nowhere. I think I must have seen
Beatrice and her half-brother quite a number of times in my last holiday