She shook her head almost contemptuously. “Julius said nothing,” she put in quickly, “nothing in particular, I mean; only that you were old friends and he was positive sure you’d come because you’d promised. It’s since you’ve come here that I’ve felt all this so strong. You come as familiar and natural to me as my own mother,” she continued, a faint flush rising on the former pallor; “and what’s more, your coming has brought a whole lot of other things nearer, too,” adding in a whisper suddenly, “things that make me afraid and happy at the same time.”
She paused a moment, peering round the room and out of the blindless windows into the darkening valley. “Now, he”—pointing with her thumb in the direction of the kitchen—“is all new to me, and I have no feeling about him at all. But you! Why, I always know where you are, and what you’ll be doing next, and saying, and even what you’re thinking and feeling half the time—jest as I do with Julius—almost.”
The next minute came the direct question that I dreaded. It was like a pistol shot:
“And you feel the same, Professor? You feel it, too? You know all about me—and this great wonderful thing that’s creepin’ up nearer all the time. Don’t you, now?”
I looked straight at her over the big lamp-shade, feeling that some part of me went lost in the depths of those strange, peering eyes. There was a touch of authority in her face—about lips and mouth—that I had seen once before. For an instant it hovered there while she waited for my reply. It lifted the surface plainness of her expression into a kind of solemn beauty. Her charm poured over me envelopingly.
“There is,” I stammered, “a curious sense of intimacy between us—all, and it is very delightful. It comes to me rather like childhood memories revived. The loneliness of this valley,” I added, sinking my voice lest its trembling should be noticeable, “may account for a good many strange feelings, but it’s the peace and loveliness that should make the chief appeal.”
The searching swiftness of the look she flashed upon me, faintly touched with scorn, I have seen sometimes in the eyes of a child who knows an elder says vain things for its protection in the dark. Such weak attempts but bring the reality nearer.
“Oh, I feel that too—the loveliness—right enough,” she said at once, her eyes still fixed on mine, “but I mean these other things as well.” Her tone, her phrase, assumed that I also was aware of them. “Where do they come from? What are they exactly? I often fancy there’s lots of other people up here besides ourselves, only they’re hidden away always—watchin’, waitin’ for something to happen—something that’s being got ready like. Oh, but it’s a splendid feeling, too, and makes me feel alive all over.” She sat up and clapped her hands softly like a child, but there was awe as well as joy in her. “And it comes from the woods and sky somehow—like wind and lightning. God showed Himself once, didn’t He, in a burnin’ bush and in a mighty rushin’ wind?”
“Nature seems very real in a place like this,” I said hurriedly. “We see no other human beings. Imagination grows active and constructs——”