When
she sat down again her cheeks were wet. Robin's were wet also, but
she touched them with her handkerchief quickly and dried them. It
was as if she had faltered for a moment in her lesson.
"Did Dowie ever tell you anything about Donal?" she asked
hesitatingly.
"Something. He was the little boy you played with?"
"Yes. He was the first human creature," she said it very slowly
as if trying to find the right words to express what she meant,
"--the first HUMAN creature I had ever known. You see Mademoiselle,
he--he knew everything. He had always been happy, he BELONGED
to people and things. I belonged to nobody and nothing. If I had
been like him he would not have seemed so wonderful to me. I was
in a kind of delirium of joy. If a creature who had been deaf dumb
and blind had suddenly awakened, and seeing on a summer day in a
world full of flowers and sun--it might have seemed to them as it
seemed to me."
"You have remembered it through all the years," said Mademoiselle,
"like that?"
"It was the first time I became alive. One could not forget it.
We only played as children play but--it WAS a delirium of joy. I
could not bear to go to sleep at night and forget it for a moment.
Yes, I remember it--like that. There is a dream I have every now
and then and it is more real than--than this is--" with a wave of
her hand about her. "I am always in a real garden playing with
a real Donal.
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