Then she began to understand him, and said, gently, "You have no occasion to."
"I wish you, or any one, could find the logic to prove that."
"The proof is not in logic but in nature, that is ever young. They who draw their life from nature do not fall into the only age we need dread."
"Do you not expect to grow old?"
She shook her head half humorously and said, "But these children will before I get them to bed."
He ostensibly resumed his magazine, but did not turn any leaves.
His first mental query was, "Have I rightly gauged Miss Walton? I half believe she understands me better than I do her. I estimated her as a goodish, fairly educated country girl, of the church-going sort, one that would be dreadfully shocked at finding me out, and deem it at once her mission to pluck me as a brand from the burning. I know all about the goodness of such girls. They are ignorant of the world; they have never been tempted, and they have a brood of little feminine weaknesses that of course are not paraded in public.
"And no doubt all this is true of Miss Walton, and yet, for some reason, she interests me a little this evening. She is refined, but nowhere in the world will you meet drearier monotony and barrenness than among refined people. Having no real originality, their little oddities are polished away. In Miss Walton I'm beginning to catch glimpses of vistas unexplored, though perhaps I am a fool for thinking so.
"What a peculiar voice she has! She would make a poor figure, no doubt, in an opera; and yet she might render a simple aria very well. But for songs of nature and ballads I have never heard so sympathetic a voice. It suggests a power of making music a sweet home language instead of a difficult, high art, attainable by few. Really Miss Walton is worth investigation, for no one with such a voice can be utterly commonplace. Strange as it is, I cannot ignore her. Though she makes no effort to attract my attention, I am ever conscious of her presence."