"You're laughing at me," she said, with the shyness of a child. "You know it's all only pretending; you know what a shabby place this is—really and truly. You've been good and kind about it; you've never laughed at me, like other people." "God forbid, child!" "That's it!" she exclaimed quickly. "Child! That's what you think me; that's what you believe me to be. If a child brought you a broken doll, you'd be sorry, and make much of it, although in your heart you'd laugh, because it was such a little thing to make a fuss about. And you've been sorry for me—and have pretended with me that this place was what it has never been. And in your heart you have never ceased to laugh at me." "In my heart I have never laughed at you at all," he said solemnly. They had unconsciously drawn nearer to each other in the solitude of the garden under the moon; their hands were touching. For now it seemed that she wanted desperately to touch hands with some friendly being—someone, for choice, who came out of the big world mysteriously, as this man had done. She was so much of a child that she needed comforting; so much of a woman that she needed loving. "I was wrong to say that you had laughed at me," she said penitently—"you have been the only one that has understood. I wonder if you remember when you first looked over the wall?" [48] [48] "Shall I ever forget it!" he exclaimed, in all honesty. "You see, I had never imagined any place like this"—he glanced round about him, and whimsically shook his head as he spoke—"and of course I was surprised. And then I saw you—and I understood at once that you were so different from anyone I had seen in Arcadia Street, or indeed anywhere. And so we—we talked." "I shall never forget it," she said. "I had always tried to make-believe a little, because when one does that one gets away from all the tiresome things—all the things that must happen, and yet that ought not to happen at all. You see, so many people seem always to have held out hands to me for money; and I've had so little money to give them." "And so—just to enable you to forget them a little—you started this great game of make-believe; this pretending that you were something better (although that could never be, you know)—something bigger and greater than you really were. The fine lady walked in her garden every night, and saw the flowers
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