Joan laughed.
"That is a funny story, sure 'nough," she said. "I 'specs 'twas awnly another fairy body, arter all."
"No, it wasn't. She had your voice and your spirit in her; and that picture which my brain painted for me was so much better than the thing my hand has painted that, in the morning, I was almost tempted to destroy this altogether. But I didn't."
"An' what did this here misty sort o' maid say to 'e?"
"Strange things, strange things. Things I would give a great deal to hear you say. It seemed that you had come, Joan, it seemed that you had purposely come from your little cottage on the cliff through the darkness before dawn. Why? To share my loneliness, to brighten my poor shadowy life. Dreams are funny things, are they not? What d'you think you said?"
"Sure I dunnaw."
"Why, you said that you were not going to leave me any more; that you believed in me and that you had come to me because it was bad for a man to live all alone in the world. You said that you felt alone too—without me. And it made me feel happy to hear you say that, though I knew, all the time, that it was not the real beautiful Joan who spoke to me."
Thereupon the girl asked a question which seemed to argue some sharpening of intelligence within her.
"An' when I spoke that, what did you say, Mister Jan?"
"I didn't say anything at all. I just took that sweet Joan-of-dreams into my arms and kissed her."