"You know how she reads—quite beyond the ordinary little girl's appreciation?"
"Yes—but she may have an extraordinary mind without being a genius of any sort. And I'm responsible for her reading. It isn't so precocious after all. I've just given her simple, beautiful things instead of simple, silly ones."
"But, Peter, I've another reason besides her reading. She goes off by herself and sits brooding—dreaming—for hours at a time. I've come on her unexpectedly once or twice and she didn't even realize that I was there—she was so rapt. She looked as if she were seeing visions!"
"Perhaps she was," said Peter softly. "I've seen visions in my time, and I'm no poet. Haven't you—when you were as young as Sheila? Confess now—haven't you?"
But Mrs. Caldwell resolutely shook her head: "Not like Sheila does. And neither have you, Peter. Sheila is different from you and me. You know her mother was Irish—full of whimsical fancy and quaint superstitions."
"Ah, I had forgotten about her mother."
"Of course. You were only a boy when she died." And her eyes filled with slow, remembering tears as she went on, "She always believed in fairies—even when she was face to face with a reality like death. And Sheila believes in them, too, though her mother didn't live long enough to tell her about them. She never says anything about it, but I know that she has a whole world which I can't share—the dream-world her mother bequeathed to her."
"But that's beautiful!" cried Peter.
"Yes," she admitted, "it's beautiful. But, Peter, it's sad for me because—because I can't follow her there."
She fell silent for a moment, her eyes wistful and anxious; and suddenly he saw the pathos of age in her face as well as its finely tempered beauty, the pathos of all the closed doors that would open no more—among them the door of fairyland.