“Ah, I’m glad to hear your voice—I still remember voices, though I hear so few,” she murmured dreamily. “Yes—I live here alone. The old woman you saw goes away at night. She won’t stay after dark ... she says she can’t. Isn’t it funny? But it doesn’t matter; I like the darkness.” She leaned to me with one of her irrelevant smiles. “The dead,” she said, “naturally get used to it.”
Once more I cleared my throat; but nothing followed.
She continued to gaze at me with confidential blinks. “And Grace? Tell me all about my darling. I wish I could have seen her again ... just once.” Her laugh came out grotesquely. “When she got the news of my death—were you with her? Was she terribly upset?”
I stumbled to my feet with a meaningless stammer. I couldn’t answer—I couldn’t go on looking at her.
“Ah, I see ... it’s too painful,” she acquiesced, her eyes brimming, and she turned her shaking head away.
“But after all ... I’m glad she was so sorry.... It’s what I’ve been longing to be told, and hardly hoped for. Grace forgets....” She stood up too and flitted across the room, wavering nearer and nearer to the door.
“Thank God,” I thought, “she’s going.”
“Do you know this place by daylight?” she asked abruptly.
I shook my head.
“It’s very beautiful. But you wouldn’t have seen me then. You’d have had to take your choice between me and the landscape. I hate the light—it makes my head ache. And so I sleep all day. I was just waking up when you came.” She smiled at me with an increasing air of confidence. “Do you know where I usually sleep? Down below there—in the garden!” Her laugh shrilled out again. “There’s a shady corner down at the bottom where the sun never bothers one. Sometimes I sleep there till the stars come out.”