To them, though
make-believe, it was a make-believe of something that was right and
natural and in no sense cruel. Grown-ups did it too. It was necessary
for her good.
"We was going to burn her up, sir," the older one informed me, answering
my "Why?" with the explanation, "Because she wouldn't believe what we
wanted 'er to believe."
And, game though it was, the feeling of reality about the little episode
was so arresting, so terrific in some way, that only with difficulty did
I confine my admonitions on this occasion to mere words. The boys slunk
off, frightened in their turn, yet not, I felt, convinced that they had
erred in principle. It was their inheritance. They had breathed it in
with the atmosphere of their bringing-up. They would renew the salutary
torture when they could--till she "believed" as they did.
I went back into the house, afflicted with a passion of mingled pity and
distress impossible to describe, yet on my short way across the garden
was attacked by other moods in turn, each more real and bitter than its
predecessor. I received the whole series, as it were, at once. I felt
like a diver rising to the surface through layers of water at different
temperatures, though here the natural order was reversed, and the cooler
strata were uppermost, the heated ones below.
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