the dusk I saw something that made me feel as if I were filled with
fire, as if I wanted to dance and sing and fly up into the air, because
I was changed and wonderful. But what I saw was not changed at all, and
had not grown old, and I wondered again and again how such things could
happen, and whether nurse's stories were really true, because in the
daytime in the open air everything seemed quite different from what it
was at night, when I was frightened, and thought I was to be burned
alive. I once told my father one of her little tales, which was about a
ghost, and asked him if it was true, and he told me it was not true at
all, and that only common, ignorant people believed in such rubbish. He
was very angry with nurse for telling me the story, and scolded her,
and after that I promised her I would never whisper a word of what she
told me, and if I did I should be bitten by the great black snake that
lived in the pool in the wood. And all alone on the hill I wondered what
was true. I had seen something very amazing and very lovely, and I knew
a story, and if I had really seen it, and not made it up out of the
dark, and the black bough, and the bright shining that was mounting up
to the sky from over the great round hill, but had really seen it in
truth, then there were all kinds of wonderful and lovely and terrible
things to think of, so I longed and trembled, and I burned and got cold.
And I looked down on the town, so quiet and still, like a little white
picture, and I thought over and over if it could be true. I was a long
time before I could make up my mind to anything; there was such a
strange fluttering at my heart that seemed to whisper to me all the time
that I had not made it up out of my head, and yet it seemed quite
impossible, and I knew my father and everybody would say it was dreadful
rubbish. I never dreamed of telling him or anybody else a word about it,
because I knew it would be of no use, and I should only get laughed at
or scolded, so for a long time I was very quiet, and went about thinking
and wondering; and at night I used to dream of amazing things, and
sometimes I woke up in the early morning and held out my arms with a
cry. And I was frightened, too, because there were dangers, and some
awful thing would happen to me, unless I took great care, if the story
were true. These old tales were always in my head, night and morning,
and I went over them and told them to myself over and over again, and