Maria had fallen in love with the baby, and her first impulse, as in the case of all true love, was secrecy.

Why she should have been ashamed of her affection, her passion, for it was, in fact, passion, her first, she could not have told.

It was the sublimated infatuation half compounded of dreams, half of instinct, which a little girl usually has for her doll.

But Maria had never had any particular love for a doll.

She had possessed dolls, of course, but she had never been quite able to rise above the obvious sham of them, the cloth and the sawdust and the paint.