“I know.” She sat staring down at her locked fingers. “It isn’t a bit like me; I haven’t any nerves at all, as a rule—not enough to make me sympathetic even. Derry says my lack of imagination is simply appalling—that unless I can see a thing or touch it or taste it or smell it or hear it, I simply won’t believe that it exists—that I don’t really believe that the world’s round, because it looks flat to me! He laughs about it, but I do honestly think that it worries him.”
“It generally worries Derry when someone doesn’t see things his way.” Devon smiled reminiscently.
“Well, you know how he is. He fully believes that they’re trying to signal to us from Mars, and he almost goes wild because no one pays any attention to the signals! He thinks that phonographs are much more incredible than Ouija boards, and that telephones are far more extraordinary than telepathy. It wouldn’t be any effort to Derry to believe that the world was shaped like a hat-box, with blue and green stripes and a nice little handle to carry it around!”
“You must be a great trial to him, Madame Materialist.”
“Oh, he wrings his hands over me. He says for any one to seem as spiritual and be as literal as I am is nothing more nor less than a swindle. Oh, oh, if he could see me to-night!”
“But will you be good enough to tell me what in the name of Heaven is the matter with you to-night?”
“I don’t know; I don’t know.” She drew a long breath, making a piteous effort to smile. “I’m—frightened.”
“Frightened of what?”
“I don’t know, I tell you.” She glanced about her with a long, despairing shiver. “Of the night—of the world—of the room—of—of everything.”
“The room! You know when you talk like that, Anne, you make me seriously consider ringing up a doctor. I don’t believe that all America holds a more delightful room—gayer or kinder or more friendly; it’s nothing short of a miracle what you’ve done to this old barn! It’s the most reassuring room I’ve ever set my foot in; you know, when you come into it with its fires and flowers and lights, you can almost hear it singing and laughing to itself, ‘Here—here dwells happiness.’”