Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/147



Helen Morrison caught the timid, butterfly-like little creature that Laurel was at thirteen, in her soft deft hands, and cautiously lifted one scooped palm from over the other, as it were, and peered into the dark, domed chamber to see what sort of creature was there, her interest was instantly aroused. She had never seen a little-girl specimen of Laurel's sort—so composed and self-possessed in speech and manner, so at home in smart, up-to-date frocks, so skilled in smart, up-to-date sports, so familiar with smart, up-to-date beauty-shop secrets—but underneath like a child who has lived on an island, alone somewhere, untold and untaught.

"She's like a book I bought in Florence once," Helen Morrison told Stephen one day, after Laurel had been visiting her. "It's a beautifully bound book, in full leather, and hand-tooled, in old blue and gold. But its pages are blank. I bought it to write odd bits of poetry in. Yes, Laurel is a little like that—beautifully finished on the outside, but full of pages as white as snow that never have been written on."

a small table beside Helen Morrison's bed there was a picture of a little girl whose pages also had never been written on. Often Helen Morrison would take the lovely little miniature of her dead