Leonie suddenly stood up, nervously pulling at the man’s top waistcoat button as she furtively glanced first over one shoulder and then over the other.

“No! she doesn’t touch me,” she faltered, “and I—­I don’t always see her.  But—­but”—­she laid her open palm against her forehead in a curious little gesture suggestive of the East—­“but she pulls me through my forehead, and when she pulls I’ve—­I’ve got to go!  May I hold that elephant?”

The brain specialist looked straight into the strange eyes which smiled confidingly back into his.

“Just a moment, sweetheart,” said he.  “What do your little friends, and Nannie, and Auntie say when you tell them about the dreams?”

Leonie leant listlessly against the arm of the chair, and sighed as she flashed a lightning glance at her aunt who was turning over a periodical on a table by her side.

“I don’t tell Nannie because I think she wouldn’t weally understand, and—­and——­”

Silence.

“Well, darling?”

“Auntie,” she spoke in the merest whisper, “got awful cwoss the first time I did tell her.  She was going out to a dance, and I was telling her whilst she was dwessing—­it was a lovely dwess all sparkles and little wosebuds—­and I upset a bottle of scent over her gloves.  The scent too was like my dweams, just like—­like—­oh!  I don’t know, and I haven’t any!”

Once more the man intuitively bridged the gulf.

“No little friends?  How’s that?”

“Bimba died,” she announced casually.  “She liked books, too.  It’s vewy silly thinking dolls are babies, isn’t it; that’s why I love weading, it—­it seems weal!”

Lady Hetth broke in hurriedly.

“We simply can’t keep her away from books when she’s in town.  Of course when we are in the country she simply lives out of doors.  It is very difficult to keep her amused.  She sulks when she goes to a party and always wants to go home!”

“I don’t sulk weally, Auntie, I jus’—­jus’ don’ seem to know how to play!”

She smiled a wan little smile at the woman who had no children of her own, and moved away slowly with a backward doggy look at the man.

“Good God!” he muttered.  “Will you come here, Lady Hetth!”

CHAPTER II

  “When your fear cometh as a desolation.”—­The Bible.

Susan Hetth rose.

She had always intensely disliked her brother-in-law’s old friend, failing utterly to perceive the heart of gold studded with rare gems that was hidden under a bushel of intentional brusqueness.

But as she was under an obligation to him she decided to make herself as pleasant as possible, and to obey his orders, however irksome.

Great brain specialist, great philanthropist, she had rung him up in a panic that morning after having vainly ransacked her memory for some other human being in whom she could with safety confide her fear, and from whom she could expect some meed of succour.