So I was cared for, and instructed, and educated; and, knowing not what a monstrosity I was, I loved them both ardently, and lived on happily enough, in my splendid prison, for my first ten years in this world.
"Then came a change.

My nurse died; and it became clear that I must quit my solitary life, and see the sort of world I lived in.

So my father, seeing all this, sat down in the twilight one night beside me, and told me the story of my own hideousness.

I was but a child then, and it is many and many years ago; but this gray summer morning, I feel what I felt then, as vividly as I did at the time.

I had not learned the great lesson of life then--endurance, I have scarcely learned it yet, or I should bear life's burden longer; but that first night's despair has darkened my whole after-life.