IT is astonishing how quickly The Other One learns to hide. If you even glanced at Jamie when he went to The Other Side he knew it and came back even though he was only two and a half.
Alice knew that he danced to himself in the glass. She had found it out one day when he had forgotten that she was in the room, and she saw him jigging to himself. He held his hands above his head, fluttering them in time to one of those rhythms to which babies are forever beating time, that are forever ringing in their ears. Sometimes he took chubby dance steps and again he jigged up and down from the knees but not moving his feet at all. He was as absorbed as a scientist and as serious as if dancing were a religious rite. A solemn joy shone from his face. Then presently, without remembering his mother, he sat down on the floor and picked up a shoe and played himself a rhythm which went: "Tap, tap tap—Tap, tap, tap—Tap, tap, tap, tap."
She spied on him after that and would find him dancing before the glass, keeping time to the music she couldn't hear. But if he heard her footstep first—he would pretend to be about something else. Often she would hear him beating out his mysterious rhythms. Often, forgetting himself, he would absent-mindedly play them with a spoon on the table during mealtimes.
Alice so loved the spectacle of this dance that she would play foot-compelling airs on the piano never look-
