Every moment she was AWARE. After
all the years--from the far away days--he had come back. No one
had dreamed of the queer half abnormal secret she had always kept
to herself as a child--as a little girl--as a bigger one when she
would have died rather than divulge that in her loneliness there
had been something she had remembered--something she had held on
to--a memory which she had actually made a companion of, making
pictures, telling herself stories in the dark, even inventing
conversations which not for one moment had she thought would
or could ever take place. But they had been living things to her
and her one near warm comfort--closer, oh, so weirdly closer than
kind, kind Dowie and dearly beloved Mademoiselle. She had wondered
if the two would have disapproved if they had known--if Mademoiselle
would have been shocked if she had realized that sometimes when
they walked together there walked with them a growing, laughing
boy in a swinging kilt and plaid and that he had a voice and eyes
that drew the heart out of your breast for joy. At first he had
only been a child like herself, but as she had grown he had grown
with her--but always taller, grander, marvellously masculine and
beyond compare. Yet never once had she dared to believe or hope
that he could take form before her eyes--a living thing. He had
only been the shadow she had loved and which could not be taken
away from her because he was her secret and no one could ever know.
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