Her little bedroom next to nurse’s large one was a beautiful affair, with red roses up and down the wall-paper and in and out of the crockery and round and round the carpet.  Her bed was magnificent, with lace and more roses, and there was a fine photograph of her beautiful mother in a silver frame on the mantelpiece.  But all these things were of little avail when the dark came.  She began to be frightened of the dark.

There came a night when, waking with a suddenness that did of itself contribute to her alarm, she was conscious that the room was intensely dark, and that every one was very far away.  The house, as she listened, seemed to be holding its breath, the clock in the nursery was ticking in a frightened, startled terror, and hesitating, whimsical noises broke, now close, now distant, upon the silence.  She lay there, her heart beating as it had surely never been allowed to beat before.  She was simply a very small, very frightened little girl.  Then, before she could cry out, she was aware that some one was standing beside her bed.  She was aware of this before she looked, and then, strangely (even now she had taken no peep), she was frightened no longer.

The room, the house, were suddenly comfortable and safe places; as water slips from a pool and leaves it dry, so had terror glided from her side.  She looked up then, and, although the place had been so dark that she had been unable to distinguish the furniture, she could figure to herself quite clearly her visitor’s form.  She not only figured it, but also quite easily and readily recognised it.  All these years she had forgotten him, but now at the vision of his large comfortable presence she was back again amongst experiences and recognitions that evoked for her once more all those odd first days when, with how much discomfort and puzzled dismay, she had been dropped, so suddenly, into this distressing world.  He put his arms around her and held her; he bent down and kissed her, and her small hand went up to his beard in exactly the way that it used to do.  She nestled up against him.

“It’s a very long time, isn’t it,” he said, “since I paid you a visit!”

“Yes, a long, long time.”

“That’s because you didn’t want me.  You got on so well without me.”

“I didn’t forget about you,” she said.  “But I asked mummy about you once, and she said you were all nonsense, and I wasn’t to think things like that.”

“Ah! your mother’s forgotten altogether.  She knew me once, but she hasn’t wanted me for a very, very long time.  She’ll see me again, though, one day.”

“I’m so glad you’ve come.  You won’t go away again now, will you?”

“I never go away,” he said.  “I’m always here.  I’ve seen everything you’ve been doing, and a very dull time you’ve been making of it.”

He talked to her and told her about some of the things the other children in the Square were doing.  She was interested a little, but not very much; she still thought a great deal more about herself than about anything or anybody else.