Sylvia's wide gaze rested on the mill, and she pressed her hand to her breast.
"Why, that's easily done," responded Dunham consolingly. "Just let Thinkright give me an axe, and I'll tickle that old pessimist's ribs until its eyes fly open and it giggles from its roof to its rickety old legs."
Sylvia shook her head. "No. Force would only do harm. Love must open the shutters."
"Love?" repeated John, staring at the speaker.
She nodded. "Yes, the same thing that opened mine."
He continued to regard her. "Do you know, you're a very odd girl," he said at last.
"No," she replied.
"To talk about Love opening those weather-beaten, rusty old blinds. How could it?"
"I don't know; but it will. I feel that it will. You will see." She gave a strange little smile, and Dunham regarded her uneasily.
For the first time it occurred to him that she might be unbalanced. In that revealing Look which he had surprised a while ago she seemed to have given herself to him. He had been strangely conscious of proprietorship in her, a sort of responsibility for her, ever since. By his strategy he had secured her unconsciousness of discovery, and thus given himself time.