“It’s too bad you’re so nervous.”
“That’s it. I’m glad you called it by a name. I’m glad you looked at your watch and that you kicked the fire. I had almost forgotten that there were such things as watches. I seem to have been poised in space, too, waiting and listening for something—I don’t know what—as though I had asked a great question which must in some way be answered.”
Gallatin glanced at her silently, then slowly took out his pipe and tobacco.
“Let’s talk,” he said quietly.
But instead of taking his old place beside the fire, he sank at the foot of one of the young beech trees that formed a part of the structure of her shelter near the head of her balsam bed.
“I know what you mean,” he said soothingly. “I felt it, too. The trouble is—there’s never any answer. They’d like to tell us many things—those people out there,” and he waved his hand. “They’d like to, but they can’t. It’s a pity, isn’t it? The sounds are cheerful, though. They say they’re the voyagers singing as they shoot the rapids.”
She watched his face narrowly, not doubtfully as she had done earlier, but eagerly, as though seeking the other half of a thought which conformed to her own.
“I’m glad you heard,” she said quickly. “I thought I must have dreamed—which would have been strange, since I haven’t been asleep. It gives me a greater faith in myself. I haven’t been really frightened, I hope. Only filled with wonder that such things could be.”
“They can’t really, you know,” he drawled. “Some people never hear the voices.”
“I never did before.”