Page:The Gesture No 13 1911.djvu/3

 and tripped about chattering as other children do. Then came meningitis; and when little Alice came thorough the horrible pain, the fearful delirium, it was to find that she had died and been born again in a world where it was always dark, and which was utterly devoid of sound. She had tormenting recollections of the sunlight, and haunting memories of the music of the earth.



But they had gone for ever.

Imagination reels in the effort to understand what that poor helpless child felt. Even the mind of Dante could not have imagined anything more horrible than her plight. Let us hope that infancy robbed it or some of its horror for her. But we can imagine the little girl, waking to find herself in the dark, trying vainly to call to mother or father, and unable to hear herself, or to hear her agonised