Following a half-defined inclination, he bent his steps toward the lake.

The moon was mirrored in its glassy surface, the place silent and deserted.

With slight effort of fancy he called up the scene again.

He saw in the moonlight the fairy form of the child, and what even others had regarded as the embodiment of human loveliness and truth bending over it.
"And she was the little ghost that once haunted me," he thought, "and seemed all eyes and affection.

How those eyes used to welcome and turn to me, as if in some subtle way she drew from me the power to exist at all.