[Pause] `Yeah, she's pretty.'

`Parents - what are this little girl's parents like?'

`There are little field daisies too, and lilac bushes.'

[Pause] 'The parents are bastards. They beat the kid . . . the little gig. They buy long necklaces and they whip her with

them. They tie her up with linked bracelets. They give her poison candy, which makes her sick, and then they force her to drink her own vomit. They never let the girl be alone. Whenever she goes to the fields, where she is now, they beat her when she comes home.'

(I didn't say a word, but the impulse to say `and they beat her when she comes home' had the strength of Hercules.)

There was a long pause.

They beat her with books. They hit her on the head again and again with books. They stick pins and pencils in her. And tacks. When they're done with her they throw her in the cellar.'

Linda was not relaxed; she wasn't crying; she seemed her bitchy self essentially, complaining against the parents but not able to feel sorry for the little girl. She felt only bitterness.

`Look very closely at the little girl in the fields, Linda. Look very closely at her.

[Pause] The little girl-?'

[Pause] `The little girl . . . is crying.'

`Why is the little . . . does she have . . . does the girl have any flowers?'

'Yes, she has It's a rose, a white rose. I don't know where. . .'

[Pause] `What is she . . . how, does she feel toward the white rose?'

The white rose is the only . . thing in the world which alms can talk to, the only thing that . . . loves her . . . She holds the flower in front of her eyes by the stem and she talks to it and . .. no . . . she doesn't even hold it. It floats to her . . . like magic, but she never, not once ever, touches it, and she never kisses it. She looks at it and it sees her and in those moments . . . in those moments … the little girl … is happy, The white rose, with the white rose … she is happy.'