So began the strangest era of my childhood. I suppose also I was slowly less child than girl, less girl than woman. For the years of my father’s ratting, a solemn mood of my own descended on me. Things that had delighted and pleased me as a child delighted and pleased no longer. It was as if something had been taken from the pictures and sounds of the world, or as if the greatest possession of a child is easy joy. So that I felt I was in a condition of waiting, waiting for something unknown to replace the grace of being young. Of course I was young, very young, but, as I remember it, no one is
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