For an instant a smile lingered at her lips, but it seemed to come hard. It was all too plain that she hadn't smiled many times in the past days. But for some unaccountable reason Bruce's heart leaped when he saw it. It had potentialities, that smile. It seemed to light her whole face. He was suddenly exultant at the thought that once he understood everything, he might bring about such changes that he could see it often.
"They were just baby letters from—from Linda-Tinda to Bwovaboo—letters about the deer and the berries and the squirrels—and all the wild things that lived up here."
"Berries!" Bruce cried. "I had some on the way up." His tone wavered, and he seemed to be speaking far away. "I had some once—long ago."
"Yes. You will understand, soon. I didn't understand why you didn't answer my letters. I understand now, though. You never got them."
"No. I never got them. But there are several Duncans in my city. They might have gone astray."
"They went astray—but it was before they ever reached the post-office. They were never mailed, Bruce. I was to know why, later. Even then it was part of the plan that I should never get in communication with you again—that you would be lost to me forever.
"When I got older, I tried other tacks. I wrote to the asylum, enclosing a letter to you. But those letters were not mailed, either.
"Now we can skip a long time. I grew up. I knew everything at last and no longer lived with the family I mentioned before. I came here, to this old house—and made it decent to live in. I cut my own wood for my fuel except when one of the men tried to please me by cutting it for me. I wouldn't use it at first. Oh, Bruce—I wouldn't touch it!"
Her face was no longer lovely. It was drawn with terrible passions. But she quieted at once.
"At last I saw plainly that I was a little fool—that all they would do for me, the better off I was. At first, I almost starved to death because I wouldn't use the food that they sent me. I tried to grub it out of the hills. But I came to it at last. But, Bruce, there were many things I didn't come to. Since I learned the truth, I have never given one of them a smile except in scorn, not a word that wasn't a word of hate.