zig-zagged her finger again, 'but it's more red than purple—that bad colour.'
'And what are the colours at the top of the—whatever you see?'
Slowly she leaned forward and traced on the rug the figure of the Egg itself.
'I see them so,' she said, pointing with a grass stem, 'white, green, yellow, red, purple, and when people are angry or bad, black across the red—as you were just now.'
'Who told you anything about it—in the beginning?' I demanded.
'About the colours? No one. I used to ask what colours were when I was little—in table-covers and curtains and carpets, you see—because some colours hurt me and some made me happy. People told me; and when I got older that was how I saw people.' Again she traced the outline of the Egg which it is given to very few of us to see.
'All by yourself?' I repeated.
'All by myself. There wasn't anyone else. I only found out afterwards that other people did not see the Colours.'
She leaned against the tree-bole plaiting and unplaiting chance-plucked grass stems. The children in the wood had drawn nearer. I could see them with the tail of my eye frolicking like squirrels.
'Now I am sure you will never laugh at me,' she went on after a long silence. 'Nor at them.'
'Goodness! No! 'I cried, jolted out of my
