"That isn't true."

"Even your other-your other- Your other interests," Leah said, with a small stiff smile, still turned away from her husband, "are ways of thinking about yourself."

"We won't discuss that now," Gideon said.

"We won't discuss it at all: I'm not interested."

"It isn't just my objection," Gideon said, "but my parents' as well, and even Ewan said he noticed-"

"Ewan-!" Leah said. "He's home even less than you are."

"And Lily, and Aveline-"

"Ah, the Bellefleurs are siding against me!" Leah laughed. "The redoubtable Lake Noir Bellefleurs!"

"And Della too."

"Della! But that's a lie," Leah said angrily.

"According to my mother-"

"According to your mother! Don't they have anything else to do, those absurd old women, but sit around and gossip about me?"

"You upset Germaine with your constant attention, your constant fussing, even the way you sometimes look at her," Gideon said, still in an even voice, "I've seen it myself: it would frighten me."

Leah made an impatient snorting sound. "You. It would frighten you."

"I don't mean to suggest that she doesn't love you. Of course she loves you. She's a wonderfully sweet little girl, she does love you, but at the same time . . . at the same time, Leah . . . don't you really know what I mean?"

"No."

"You don't really?"

"No. I told you no."

"Your obsessiveness, your morbidity . . ."

"Obsessiveness! Morbidity! You've gotten light-headed from flying, haven't you, up there in the sky with nobody around, so you can think your selfish cruel thoughts with no interruptions! Of course her mother has had to love her: her father has no feeling for her at all."

"Leah, that's ridiculous. Please."

"Well-should we ask her?"

"Leah."

"She's sitting right here pretending not to be listening, isn't she! Should we ask her whether her father loves her?-or whether her mother isn't the only person in the world who loves her."

But Germaine did not look up. She was shading in the rainbow now with a bright scarlet crayon.

"Suppose you had to choose, Germaine," Leah said softly. "Between your father and your mother."

"Leah, please-"

"Germaine," Leah said, touching the child's shoulder, "are you listening?-do you understand? Suppose, just for the fun of it, you had to choose. Between your father and me."

But the little girl did not look to left or right. She remained bent over her coloring book, her lower lip caught in her teeth.

"Let her alone, Leah," Gideon said, reaching across to take Leah's yellow-gloved hand. "You really know better. This isn't like you."

"But it's just in play, it's just for fun," Leah said, pulling her hand out of his. "Children love to play: they invent the most outlandish things: they invent entire worlds! Which you wouldn't know, because you've cut yourself off from your children. So Germaine, just tell us, nod your head one side or the other, which of us you'd choose. If you had to. If you were going to live with one of us or the other for the rest of your life."

"Leah, really," Gideon said uneasily, "this is what I mean by-"

"Germaine? Why are you pretending not to hear?"

But the little girl did not hear.

She continued coloring, and when the scarlet crayon snapped in two she simply used the larger of the pieces, and kept on coloring, without glancing up.

Now the rainbow was wide, now the rainbow was immense, crowding the house and the barn and the earth out.

"You're upsetting her," Gideon said. "This is exactly what I mean."

"You began it, and now you're frightened," Leah whispered. "You're frightened she might not choose you."

"But there's no need for her to choose- It's false, it's melodramatic-"

"Who are you to speak of something being false!" Leah laughed. "You of all people!"

"It was a mistake for me to speak to you," Gideon said angrily. "You clearly don't have Germaine's well-being in mind."

"But I do! Indeed I do! I am giving her the right to choose, at this moment, I am giving her a privilege few children have: and what is your decision, Germaine? Just nod your head right or left-"

"Stop, Leah. You must know you're upsetting her."

"Germaine?"

"If you want, I'll have the driver stop and let me out. I can ride with my parents, I'll be happy to leave you alone-"

"Germaine? Why do you pretend not to hear?"

Leah bent low, peering into the child's face. She saw with what willfulness her daughter stared at the coloring book, and would not look up.

"Aren't you bad! Aren't you bad, to pretend not to hear!" Leah said. "It's as if you were lying to me. It's exactly like lying . . ."

But the little girl did not hear.

She selected another crayon, a very dirty white crayon, and began to shade over the rainbow, in quick rough slovenly strokes.

LATER, WHEN THEY were alone, Leah stooped and gripped Germaine's shoulders tight. For a long moment she said nothing, she was so angry. The faint lines on her forehead had become creases; her skin was blotched with indignation. Germaine could see without wanting to see how her mother's hair had thinned: her scalp was faintly visible, and the skull looked oddly, crudely layered, as if the bone were growing irregularly, in planes that did not quite meet. She was a haggard woman, and not at all beautiful, even in her yellow gown, with strands of pearls about her neck. . . .

"Selfish Germaine!" Leah was saying, giving her a shake. "Selfish! Nasty! Traitorous! Aren't you? You know you are!"

The Vanished Pond.

Where, everyone wondered, was poor Raphael . . . ?

The undersized child with his pale, clammy skin, and that furtive expression tinged with a melancholy irony, the son of Ewan's who could not possibly be, Ewan thought, his son, or the son of any Bellefleur, was seen less and less frequently that summer until, finally, one morning, it was discovered that he had simply vanished.

Raphael, they called, Raphael . . . ?

Where are you hiding?

At family gatherings Raphael had always been distracted and reluctant, and he was so frequently absent (he hadn't, for instance, gone to Morna's wedding) that it was several days before anyone actually missed him. And then only because one of the upstairs maids reported to Lily that his bed hadn't been slept in for three nights running.

They went in search of him to Mink Pond, of course. Albert led the way, shouting his name. . . . But where was Mink Pond? It seemed, oddly, that Mink Pond too had vanished.

By midsummer the pond had shrunk to a half-dozen shallow puddles, grown over with grasses and willow shrubs; by late summer, when Raphael was discovered missing, nothing remained but a marshy area. It was a meadow, really. Part of the large grassy meadow below the cemetery.

Where was Mink Pond, the Bellefleurs asked in astonishment.

A low-lying marshy ground, where bright mustard grew, and lush green grasses, and willow trees. It gave off a rich pleasant odor of damp and decay, even in the bright sunshine.

We must be standing in it, they said. Standing on it. Where it once was.

But looking down they saw nothing: only a meadow.

Raphael, they cried. Raphael. . . . Where have you gone? Why are you hiding from us?

Their feet sank in the spongy earth, and their shoes were soon wet and muddy. How cold, their surprised wriggling toes . . . ! Germaine ran and chattered and giggled and slipped and fell but immediately scrambled to her feet again. Then they saw that she wasn't giggling: she had begun to cry. Her face was contorted.

Raphael! Raphael! Raphael!

In Lily's arms she hid her face, and pointed toward the ground.

Raphael-there.

AFTER A SEARCH of many hours, up along Mink Creek (which had narrowed to a trickle of peculiar rust-tinged water that smelled flat and metallic) and back through the cemetery into the woods, and a mile or two into the hills, they returned to Mink Pond again-to what had been Mink Pond-and saw that their footprints were covered over, in rich green grass.

Raphael? Raphael?

Was there a pond here, really, one of the visiting cousins asked.

It was here. Or maybe over there.

Here, below the cemetery.

By those willows.

No-by that stump. Where the redwings are roosting.

A pond? Here? But when? How long ago?

Only a week ago!

No, a month ago.

Last year.

They wandered about, calling Raphael's name, though they knew it was hopeless. He had been so slight-bodied, so furtive and pale, no one had known him well, none of the children had liked him, Lily wept to think she hadn't loved him enough-not enough-and now he had gone to live beneath the earth (for, after Germaine's hysterical outburst, Lily was never to be placated, or argued out of her absurd conviction) and would not heed her cries.

Raphael, she called, where have you gone? Why are you hiding from us?

EWAN, HEARING ABOUT the pond, and his little niece's words, went out to investigate. But the pond of course was gone: there was no pond.

He stamped about, a thickset, muscular man, graying, ruddy-faced, somewhat short of breath. His stomach strained against the attractive blue-gray material of his officer's shirt; his booted heels came down hard in the moist soil. Long ago he had shaved off his beard (for it displeased his mistress Rosalind) but now an irregular patch of gray stubble covered his jaw and a good deal of his cheeks.

It was absurd, this business about the pond. There had never been a pond here. Ewan remembered quite clearly a pond over back of the apple orchard, in which he and his brothers had played as children-that pond still remained, probably-but he hadn't the energy to search for it.

Nor, curiously, had he the energy to search for Raphael. After losing Yolande, and then Garth . . .

He stared down at the moist marshy earth beneath his feet. It was just a meadow, good grazing land, rich with grass, probably fertile beneath. If it were fifty years ago they would plow it up and plant it, possibly in winter wheat; but now everything was changed; now. . . . He could not remember what he had been thinking.

FOR A LONG while Leah's and Gideon's strange little girl (about whom her grandmother Cornelia said with a mysterious smile, Ah, but Germaine isn't as odd as she might be!) refused to walk on the lawn, even in the walled garden where she had always played. She wept, she began to scream hysterically, if someone tried to lead her out; the graveled walks were all right but the lawns terrified her. If it was absolutely necessary that she cross a lawn, why then Nightshade (who did not at all mind the task, and reddened, like a proud papa, with pleasure) had to carry her.

But aren't you a silly, willful girl, Leah scolded. And all because of some nonsense about your cousin Raphael. . . .

The little girl frequently began to cry at the very mention of that name, and so the others, even Leah, soon stopped pronouncing it in her presence. And very soon they stopped pronouncing it at all: for, it seemed, young Raphael had simply vanished: there was no Raphael.

The Purple Orchid.

It was shortly after the agreement with International Steel, involving the mineral-rich land around Mount Kittery, that Leah's manservant Nightshade, grown conspicuously taller (though in fact the droll little man was simply straightening: his spine, while still misshapen, twisted queerly to one side, was gradually becoming erect) brought his mistress, one morning, a florist's box containing a single purple orchid of exquisite loveliness. It was also somewhat oversized, being about a foot in diameter.

But what is it? Leah cried, staring.

If you will allow me, Miss Leah, Nightshade murmured, taking the flower out.