"I'm velee solee."
He said it again, not knowing what else to say.
Something in his evident sincerity aroused her to protest.
"Oh, I know you thinks it queer for me to be talking this way," she said. "I know you thinks it funny for me to say I'm afraid. And I ain't, excepting—" she added hastily, "on a night like this. It kinder makes everything alive; everything that's rotten bad. I ain't ashamed of the things I've done. I ain't scared of the dead things. It's the live ones I'm afraid of—; the dirty live things. They kinder come at you in the dark." For an instant her body trembled against his. "Then they goes past you all creepy-like. Creeping on their bellies—; sliding,—like—like—slime."
"You don't know what you are saying," he interrupted.
"I know," she insisted. "I know! Some night like this I'll be doing something awful;—and they'll be there." She pointed a shaking hand towards the shadows. "They'll be there, wriggling to me—quiet—!"
"Imagination," he said, and he smiled. In the dark she could not have seen the smile, nor could she have known that the lightness of his tone covered a deep, malignant dread. "It is all imagination!"
"It ain't!" She spoke sullenly. "I tell you, it's real. It's horrible real!"
Her voice was frantic.
"Maybe it is," he conceded, and then, as she made no answer, he asked: "You like to walk with me a little?"