heard them playing in the nursery when it seemed unlikely that Robert would have a friend with him.
The first time that the true state of affairs really pricked itself into her consciousness was one day when she had been giving Robert his bath. She left the bathroom, and as she shut the door the familiar treble voice sounded in her ears and Robert's voice in answer; and the treble voice again and then Robert's. A stranger would have sworn that two children were playing there in the tub together, and yet Alice knew there was but one child and that child was Robert.
After that she heard them often and yet she never surprised them together. Robert never forgot she was in the room. She would hear them talking after Robert had been put to bed, but silence greeted her when she came in. She never caught a word that The Other One said. Once only she almost surprised them, coming in quietly as she did, and when she asked Robert,
"What were you playing, dear?" he answered,
"Nothing," and kicked both his feet with embarrassment. Then when she insisted in a disarming voice,
"But you were playing something," he hid his head in the pillow for greater security, although it was already dark, and when she urged her smoothest,
"Tell Mother," he murmured in a suffocated voice,
"I was an angel, and I was in the angel cage on top of the ship."
She figured it out later that angels had to have cages because of their wings. The angel cage was the only glimpse she ever got of what went on behind her back, until much later.
In the street, however, she would sometimes come upon Robert, who at home was so serious and good-mannered, his face alight with a deviltry unknown to her, a swaggering, bullying, roystering spirit shining
