But in this case there came no such revelation.  Looking closely at the trees and flowers, the bits of lawn and terrace, the rose-garden and corner of the house where the flaming creeper hung so thickly, I discovered nothing of the odious, unpure thing her color and grouping had unconsciously revealed.  At first, that is, I discovered nothing.  The reality stood there, commonplace and ugly, side by side with her distorted version of it that lay in my mind.  It seemed incredible.  I tried to force it, but in vain.  My imagination, ploughed less deeply than hers, or to another pattern, grew different seed.  Where I saw the gross soul of an overgrown suburban garden, inspired by the spirit of a vulgar, rich revivalist who loved to preach damnation, she saw this rush of pagan liberty and joy, this strange license of primitive flesh which, tainted by the other, produced the adulterated, vile result.

Certain things, however, gradually then became apparent, forcing themselves upon me, willy-nilly.  They came slowly, but overwhelmingly.  Not that facts had changed, or natural details altered in the grounds—­ this was impossible—­but that I noticed for the first time various aspects I had not noticed before—­trivial enough, yet for me, just then, significant.  Some I remembered from previous days; others I saw now as I wandered to and fro, uneasy, uncomfortable,—­almost, it seemed, watched by some one who took note of my impressions.  The details were so foolish, the total result so formidable.  I was half aware that others tried hard to make me see.  It was deliberate.

My sister’s phrase, “one layer got at me, another gets at you,” flashed, undesired, upon me.

For I saw, as with the eyes of a child, what I can only call a goblin garden—­house, grounds, trees, and flowers belonged to a goblin world that children enter through the pages of their fairy tales.  And what made me first aware of it was the whisper of the wind behind me, so that I turned with a sudden start, feeling that something had moved closer.  An old ash tree, ugly and ungainly, had been artificially trained to form an arbor at one end of the terrace that was a tennis lawn, and the leaves of it now went rustling together, swishing as they rose and fell.  I looked at the ash tree, and felt as though I had passed that moment between doors into this goblin garden that crouched behind the real one.  Below, at a deeper layer perhaps, lay hidden the one my sister had entered.

To deal with my own, however, I call it goblin, because an odd aspect of the quaint in it yet never quite achieved the picturesque.  Grotesque, probably, is the truer word, for everywhere I noticed, and for the first time, this slight alteration of the natural due either to the exaggeration of some detail, or to its suppression, generally, I think, to the latter.  Life everywhere appeared to me as blocked from the full delivery of its sweet and lovely message.  Some counter influence stopped it—­suppression;