And Athalie had a vague idea in after life that this was the
beginning; because there had been a little boy sitting beside her all
the while she was digging; and, somehow, she was aware that her mother
could not see him.

She was not able to recollect whether her mother had spoken to her, or
even whether she herself had conversed with the little boy. He never
came again; of that she was positive.

When it was that her brother and sisters began to suspect her of being
different she could not remember.

In the beginning she had not understood their half-incredulous
curiosity concerning her; and, ardently communicative by nature, she
was frank with them, confident and undisturbed, until their child-like
and importunate aggressiveness, and the brutal multiplicity of their
questions drove her to reticence and shyness.

For what seemed to amaze them or excite them to unbelief or to jeers
seemed to her ordinary, unremarkable, and not worthy of any particular
notice--not even of her own.

That she sometimes saw things "around corners," as Jack put it, had
seemed natural enough to her. That, now and then, she seemed to
perceive things which nobody else noticed never disturbed her even
when she became aware that other people were unable to see them. To
her it was as though her own eyesight were normal, and astigmatism the
rule among other people.

But the blunt, merciless curiosity of other children soon taught
Athalie to be on her guard. She learned that embarrassed reserve which
tended toward secretiveness and untruth before she was eleven.