"No," Robin interrupted, "you always said, when I was older you'd tell me about the other people. I mean the other people here. The ones in the woods. The ones you can't see."
Helen stared at the boy in blank disbelief. "What do you mean? There are no other people, just us." Then she recalled that every imaginative child invents playmates. Alone, she thought, Robin's always alone, no other children, no wonder he's a little—strange. She said, quietly, "You dreamed it, Robin."
The boy only stared at her, in bleak, blank alienation. "You mean," he said, "you can't hear them either?" He got up and walked out of the hut. Helen called, but he didn't turn back. She ran after him, catching at his arm, stopping him almost by force. She whispered, "Robin, Robin, tell me what you mean! There isn't anyone here. Once or twice I thought I had seen—something, by moonlight, only it was a dream. Please, Robin—please—"
"If it's only a dream, why are you frightened?" Robin asked, through a curious constriction in his throat. "If they've never hurt you—"
No, they had never hurt her. Even if, in her long-ago dream, one of them had come to her—and the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair—a scrap of memory from a vanished life on another world sang in Helen's thoughts. She looked up at the pale, impatient face of her son, and swallowed hard.
Her voice was husky when she spoke.
"Did I ever tell you about rationalization—when you want something to be true so much that you can make it sound right to yourself?"
"Couldn't that also happen to something you wanted not to be true?" Robin retorted with a mutinous curl of his mouth.
Helen would not let go his arm. She begged, "Robin—no, you'll only waste your life and break your heart looking for something that doesn't exist—"
The boy looked down into her shaken face, and suddenly a new emotion welled up in him and he dropped to his knees beside her and buried his face against her breast. He whispered, "Helen, I'll never leave you, I'll never do anything you don't want me to do, I don't want anyone but you—"