All day
long these dreams clung to her, oppressing her with their
strange unreal semblance of reality, associating themselves
with every glowing sunset, with every starry sky, till the
pictures themselves that had suggested them looked pale by
comparison.
She was, in fact, going through a mental crisis, such as, in
other circumstances, and under fostering influences, has
produced more than one small ecstatic enthusiast; the infant
shining light of some Methodist conventicle; the saintly child
visionary of some Catholic convent. But Madelon had no one to
foster, nor to interpret for her these feverish visions, so
inexplicable to herself, poor child! To the good-natured,
careless, jovial American, she would not have even hinted at
them for worlds, and not less carefully did she shun appealing
to her father for sympathy. That contemptuous "_vraiment_" dwelt
in her memory, not as a matter of resentment, but as something
to be avoided henceforth at the cost of any amount of self-
repression. She would sit leaning her languid little head on
his shoulder; but when he anxiously asked her what ailed her,
she could only reply, "I don't know, papa.
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