"Yes," said the child honestly.
"Then I'd better tell you the truth," said her mother tranquilly, "because the truth is very wonderful and beautiful—and interesting."
So she related to the child, very simply and clearly all that need be told concerning the mystery of life in its beginnings; and Athalie listened, enchanted.
And mostly it thrilled the child to realise that in her, too, lay latent a capability for the creation of life.
Another hour with her mother she remembered in after years.
Mrs. Greensleeve had not been as well: the doctor came oftener. Frequently Athalie returning from school discovered her mother lying on the bed. That evening the child was sitting on the floor at her mother's feet as usual, just inside the circle of lamplight, playing solitaire with an ancient pack of cards.
Presently something near the door attracted her attention and she lifted her head and sat looking at it, mildly interested, until, suddenly, she felt her mother's eyes on her, flushed hotly, and turned her head away.
"What were you looking at?" asked her mother in a low voice.
"Nothing, mamma."
"Athalie!"
"What, mamma?"
"What were you looking at?"
The child hung her head: "Nothing—" she began; but her mother checked her: "Don't lie, Athalie. I'll try to understand you. Now tell me what you were—what you thought you were looking at over there near the door."
The child turned and glanced back at the door over her shoulder.
"There is nothing there—now," she muttered.
"Was there anything?"
Athalie sat silent for a while, then she laid her clasped hands across her mother's knees and rested her cheek on them.
"There was a woman there," she said.
"Where?"
"Over by the door."
"You saw her, Athalie?"
"Yes, mamma."
"Did she open the door and come in and then close it behind her?"
"No."
"How did she come in?"
"I don't know. She—just came in."
"Was she a young woman?"
"No, old."
"Very old?"
"Not very. There was grey in her hair—a little."
"How was she dressed?"
"She wore a night-gown, mamma. There were spots on it—like medicine."
"Had you ever seen her before?"
"I think so."
"Who was she?"
"Mrs. Allen."
Her mother sat very still but her clasped hands tightened and a little of the colour faded from her cheeks. There was a Mrs. Allen who had been suffering from an illness which she herself was afraid she had.
"Do you mean Mrs. James Allen who lives on the old Allen farm?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, mamma."
In the morning they heard of Mrs. Allen's death. And it was several months before Mrs. Greensleeve again spoke to her daughter on the one subject about which Athalie was inclined to be most reticent. But that subject now held a deadly fascination for her mother.
They had been sitting together in Mrs. Greensleeve's bedroom; the mother knitting, in bed propped up upon the pillows. Athalie, cross-legged on a hassock beside her, was doing a little mending on her own account, when her mother said abruptly but very quietly:
"I have always known that you possess a power—which others cannot understand."
The child's face flushed deeply and she bent closer over her mending.
"I knew it when they first brought you to me, a baby just born.... I don't know how I knew it, but I did."
Athalie, sewing steadily, said nothing.
"I think," said her mother, "you are, in some degree, what is called clairvoyant."
"What?"
"Clairvoyant," repeated her mother quietly. "It comes from the French, clair, clear; the verb voir, to see; clair-voyant, seeing clearly. That is all, Athalie.... Nothing to be ashamed of—if it is true,—" for the child had dropped her work and had hidden her face in her hands.
"Dear, are you afraid to talk about it to your mother?"
"N-no. What is there to say about it?"
"Nothing very much. Perhaps the less said the better.... I don't know, little daughter. I don't understand it—comprehend it. If it's so, it's so.... I see you sometimes looking at things I cannot see; I know sometimes you hear sounds which I cannot hear.... Things happen which perplex the rest of us; and, somehow I seem to know that they do not perplex you. What to us seems unnatural to you is natural, even a commonplace matter of course."
"That's it, mamma. I have never seen anything that did not seem quite natural to me."
"Did you know that Mrs. Allen had died when you—thought you saw her?"
"I did see her."
"Yes.... Did you know she had died?"
"Not until I saw her."
"Did you know it then?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I don't know how I knew it. I seemed to know it."
"Did you know she had been ill?"
"No, mamma."
"Did it in any way frighten you—make you uneasy when you saw her standing there?"
"Why, no," said Athalie, surprised.
"Not even when you knew she was dead?"
"No. Why should it? Why should I be afraid?"
Her mother was silent.
"Why?" asked Athalie, curiously. "Is there anything to be afraid of with God and all his angels watching us? Is there?"
"No."
"Then," said the child with some slight impatience, "why is it that other people seem to be a little afraid of me and of what they say I can hear and see? I have good eyesight; I see clearly; that is all, isn't it? And there is nothing to frighten anybody in seeing clearly, is there?"
"No, dear."
"People make me so cross," continued Athalie,—"and so ashamed when they ask so many questions. What is there to be surprised at if sometimes I see things inside my mind. They are just as real as when I see them outside. They are no different."
Her mother nodded, encouragingly.
"When papa was in New York," went on Athalie, "and I saw him talking to some men in a hotel there, why should it be surprising just because papa was in New York and I was here when I saw him?"
"It surprises others, dear, because they cannot see what is beyond the vision of their physical senses."
Athalie said: "They tease me in school because they say I can see around corners. It makes me very cross and unhappy, and I don't want anybody to know that I see what they can't see. I'm ashamed to have them know it."
"Perhaps it is just as well you feel that way. People are odd. What they do not understand they ridicule. A dog that would not notice a horse-drawn