"Tell me," I said in haste, "tell me, are you Zoe?"
She was walking on, and I kept pace with her, knowing how rash I was to follow. She turned her head.
"Not to you," she answered, without pausing in her walk. "Good-night!" and she was gone.
I know I found my boat, and that, as I rowed away, there were cries of "Zoe!" from the swimmers who had missed her. I was dripping, but my blood ran fast. Was she cold? Was she shivering? Fools, to let so delicate a creature go into the water at night! The men were fools.
III
Ask me now what of the night and what of the day, for I am the watchman who is fixing his eyes upon life and finding it good. Again I knew there were events in the wind. This morning my father, too, was uneasy, and when we had finished our work, we went out together to the grove near the landing, each with a book; but we did not read. He watched the lake, and I tried not to listen for the dip of oars. At last it came,—O happy sound!—and when I started up, I found his glance upon me.
"Yes, they are coming," he said sadly, bitterly. "It seems we both expected it."
I could not answer, for I do not understand him. Why should it be a grief to him more than to me, this seeing men and women who talk and laugh, with whom one could say all one thought without being misunderstood, and who can bring us such news of the world? But I had not time to say these things, for they were coming, two boatloads of them; and I ran down to the landing to meet them. She was in the first boat, her hair covered now, but kissed by the sun wherever he could reach it. With her was an older woman, the brown-eyed young one, and the same young men. The boat touched the landing, and I helped the other women ashore; but she put her fingers on the shoulder of a man in the boat and stepped past me. Why? why? my heart cried out to her. Does she hate me for last night? Am I so different from her people because I live in the woods? In the moment I hesitated, thinking it over, they all got on shore, and were standing about my father and talking to him. Then I found he had known them, years ago.
"You have changed," the older woman was saying. "You are sadder, but not so bitter."
"That must be because of my son," he said. And he turned to me, and named me to them, and I heard their names. She is Zoe Montrose, the older woman is her aunt, and the two men her cousins; the others, all young, all laughing, and looking and moving about like birds, are friends.