g her into dark dwellings; but all the time
that light which illumines the spirit was being bestowed upon her in
limitless measure.

The next step in her awakening was to a kind of self-consciousness.
She was lying on her nurse's lap out of doors, looking up at the sky,
and some one was saying, "Oh, you pretty thing!" But it was long years
before she connected the phrase with herself, although she smiled in
response to the voice that uttered it. Then she found herself on her
feet in a garden, moving very carefully for fear of falling; and
everything about her was gigantic, from Jane Nettles, the nurse, at
whose skirt she tugged when she wanted to attract attention, to the
brown wallflower and the purple larkspur which she could not reach to
pull. There was a thin hedge at the end of the garden, through which
she looked out on a path across a field, and a thick hedge on her
left, in which a thrush had built a nest at an immense height above
her head. Jane lifted her up to look into the nest, and there was
nothing in it; then Jane lifted her up again, and, oh! there was a
blue egg there; and Jane lifted her up a third time, and the egg had
brown spots on it. The mystery of the egg awed her. She did not ask
herself how it came to be there, but she felt a solemn wonder in the
fact, and the colour caused a sensation of pleasure, a positive
thrill, to run through her. This was her first recognition of beauty,
and it was to the beauty of colour, not of form, that her senses
awoke! Through life she had a keen joy and nice discrimination in
colours, and seemed to herself to have always known their names.

But those spots on the egg. She was positive that they had come
between her first and second peep, which shows how defective her
faculty of observation, which became so exact under cultivation, was
to begin with. Beth also betrayed other traits with regard to the
spots, which she carried through life--the trick of being most
positive when she was quite in the wrong, for one; and want of faith
in other people, for another.

Jane said: "Did you see the spots that time, dearie?"

"Spots just comed," Beth declared.

"No, dearie, spots always there," Jane answered.

"Spots _comed_," Beth maintained.

"No, dearie. Spots always there, only you didn't see them."

"Spots comed _now_!" Beth stamped, and then, because Jane shook her
head, she sat down suddenly on the gravel, and sent up a howl which
brought her father out. He ch