The shock of this discovery flung her straight back upon herself; if they refused to believe these things, then there was nothing to be done.  But for herself their incredulity should not stop her.  She became a very quiet little girl—­what her nurse called “brooding.”  This incredulity of theirs drove them all instantly into a hostile camp, and the affection that she had been longing to lavish upon them must now be reserved for other, and, she could not help feeling, wiser persons.  This division of herself from the immediate world hurt her very much.  From a very early age, indeed, we need reassurance as to the necessity for our existence.  Barbara simply did not seem to be wanted.

But still worse:  now that her belief in certain things had been challenged, she herself began to question them.  Was it true, possibly, when a flaming sunset struck a sword across the Square and caught the fountain, slashing it into a million glittering fragments, that that was all that occurred?  Such a thing had been for Barbara simply a door into her earlier world.  See the fountain—­well, you have been tested; you are still simple enough to go back into the real world.  But was Barbara simple enough?  She was seven; it is just about then that we begin, under the guard of nurses carefully chosen for us by our parents, to drop our simplicity.  It must, of course, be so, or the world would be all dreamers, and then there would be no commerce.

Barbara knew nothing of commerce, but she did know that she was unhappy, that her dolls gave her no happiness, and that her Friend did not come now so often to see her.  She was, I am afraid, in character a “Hopper.”  She must be affectionate, she must demand affection of others, and will they not give it her, then must they simulate it.  The tragedy of it all was perhaps, that Barbara had not herself that coloured vitality in her that would prepare other people to be fond of her.  The world is divided between those who place affection about, now here, now there, and those whose souls lie, like drawers, unawares, but ready for the affection to be laid there.

Barbara could not “place” it about; she had neither optimism nor a sense of humour sufficient.  But she wanted it—­wanted it terribly.  If she were not to be allowed to indulge her imagination, then must she, all the more, love some one with fervour:  the two things were interdependent.  She surveyed her world with an eye to this possible loving.  There was her governess, who had been with her for a year now, tearful, bony, using Barbara as a means and never as an end.  Barbara did not love her—­how could she?  Moreover, there were other physical things:  the lean, shining marble of Miss Letts’s long fingers, the dry thinness of her hair, the way that the tip of her nose would be suddenly red, and then, like a blown-out candle, dull white again.  Fingers and noses are not the only agents in the human affections, but they have most certainly something to do with them.  Moreover, Miss Letts was too busily engaged with the survey of her relations, with now this gentleman, now that, to pay much attention to Barbara.  She dismissed her as “a queer little thing.”  There were in Miss Letts’s world “queer things” and “things not queer.”  The division was patent to anybody.