Athalie

Her first memories were of blue skies, green trees, sunshine, and the

odour of warm moist earth.

Always through life she retained this memory of her early

consciousness--a tree in pink bloom; morning-glories covering a

rotting board fence; deep, rich, sun-warmed soil into which her baby

fingers burrowed.

A little later commenced her memory of her mother--a still,

white-shawled figure sewing under a peach tree in pink bloom.

Vast were her mother's skirts, as Athalie remembered them--a wide

white tent under which she could creep out of the sunlight and hide.

Always, too, her earliest memories were crowded with children, hosts

of them in a kaleidoscopic whirl around her, and their voices seemed

ever in her ears.

By the age of four she had gradually understood that this vaguely

pictured host of children numbered only three, and that they were her

brother and two sisters--very much grown up and desirable to play

with. But at seven she began to be surprised that Doris and Catharine

were no older and no bigger than they were, although Jack's twelve

years still awed her.

It was about this time that the child began to be aware of a

difference between herself and the other children. For a year or two

it did not trouble her, nor even confuse her. She seemed to be aware

of it, that was all.

When it first dawned on her that her mother was aware of it too, she

could never quite remember. Once, very early in her career, her mother

who had been sewing under the peach tree, dropped her work and looked

down at her very steadily where she sat digging holes in the dirt.

And Athalie had a vague idea in after life that this was the

beginning; because there had been a little boy sitting beside her all

the while she was digging; and, somehow, she was aware that her mother

could not see him.

She was not able to recollect whether her mother had spoken to her, or

even whether she herself had conversed with the little boy. He never

came again; of that she was positive.

When it was that her brother and sisters began to suspect her of being

different she could not remember.

In the beginning she had not understood their half-incredulous

curiosity concerning her; and, ardently communicative by nature, she

was frank with them, confident and undisturbed, until their child-like

and importunate aggressiveness, and the brutal multiplicity of their

questions drove her to reticence and shyness.

For what seemed to amaze them or excite them to unbelief or to jeers

seemed to her ordinary, unremarkable, and not worthy of any particular

notice--not even of her own.