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Ever since Dr. Lemaitre's letter, and without hardly being aware of what she was doing, Nada had been thinking of her island, of her childhood, of how she and Oreena would scramble together on a pony's back and go splashing across the stream in a runaway gallop down the palm-pillared roadway; and of how they had often climbed to the base of a hilltop rock, and lay dreamily watching the big waves that crumbled on the reefs; far-away hills would be wrapped in purple haze; below, a hundred palms would rustle their heads together, passing from one to another among themselves the gossip as told by the wind. Nada had once believed that trees talked to each other, and often lay very still, breathless, trying to overhear what they said. And her father, puttering anxiously about when he found that no one knew where the children had gone—it had been fun to hide and make him poke about and call. The great rambling house, always lonely and depressing, would now be more so; and with Oreena gone there would be no one there but her father, and the servants never paid attention to him. Nada wanted to go home.