I only see you bit by bit. But
I couldn't tell you, Miss, my dear, what it's like to me. You do love
the wood, don't you? It's a fairy place too--same as this is."

"It's all fairy, Mrs. Bennett," Robin said. "Perhaps I am a fairy too
when I am here. Nothing seems quite earthly."

She bent forward suddenly and took the old face in her hands and kissed
it.

"Eh! I shouldn't wonder," the old fairy woman chuckled sweetly. "I used
to hear tales of fairies in Devonshire in my young days. And you do look
like something witched--but you've been witched for happiness. Babies
look that way for a bit sometimes--as if they brought something with
them when they come to earth."

"Yes," answered Robin. "Yes."

It was true that she only flitted in and out, and that she spent hours
in the depths of the wood, and always came back as if from fairy land.

Once she had a holiday of nearly a week. She came down from town one
afternoon in a pretty white frock and hat and white shoes and with an
air of such delicate radiance about her that Mrs. Bennett would have
clutched her to her breast, but for long-ago gained knowledge of the
respect due to those connected with great duchesses.

"Like a new young bride you look, my pretty dear--Miss," she cried out
when she first saw her as she came up the path between the hollyhocks in
the garden. "God's surely been good to you this day. There's something
like heaven in your face." Robin stood still a moment looking like the
light at dawn and breathing with soft quickness as if she had come in
haste.

"God has been good to me for a long time," she said.

* * * * *

In the deep wood she walked with Donal night after night when the
stillness was like heaven itself. Now and then a faint rustle among the
ferns or the half awakened movement and sleepy note of a bird in the
leaves slightly stirred the silence, but that was all. Lances of
moonlight pierced through the branches and their slow feet made no sound
upon the thick moss. Here and there pale foxglove spires held up their
late blossoms like flower spirits in the dim light.

Donal thought--the first night she came to him softly through the
ferns--that her coming was like that of some fair thing not of earth--a
vision out of some old legend or ancient poem of faery. But he marched
towards her, soldierly--like a young Lohengrin whose silver mail had
changed to khaki. There was no longer war in the world--there n