Ida said nothing. It was not necessary, and as a rule not advisable, to encourage Arabella Kinnaird when she commenced, as she sometimes described it, to talk seriously; and she rattled on:
“My dear, I’m all appreciation, and graciously pleased with the wonders that you are showing me; but still this valley strikes me as being short of something. It’s too calm and quiet. Even Eden was not complete until man appeared in it, though, as usual, he made trouble shortly afterward. It is a thing he has kept on doing ever since.”
Ida laughed.
“I’m not sure you’re sticking to historical facts,” she said.
“Facts,” returned her companion, “don’t count for much with me. I deal in impressions; and sometimes I feel full of them. I could astonish everybody if I could get them out; but that, of course, is the difficulty. Feeling, unfortunately, isn’t quite the same thing as power of expression. Still, you asked me what I thought about these mountains, and I’m trying to tell you. You have brought it on yourself, you see. The key-tone of this place is an almost overwhelming tranquillity. One rather shrinks from that kind of thing when one is not used to it, and longs to do something to disturb it. It’s a natural impulse. When you see a smooth sheet of ice you generally look for a big stone with which to smash it.”
She swung around and favored her companion with a glance of critical scrutiny; and there was no reason why Ida Stirling should shrink from it. She sat leaning forward, looking out at the mountains with steady eyes that had a half-smile in them. Her attitude was reposeful and her face quiet; but there was something in both that faintly suggested a decided character.
“I don’t think I’m readily disturbed,” she said.
“No,” answered her companion reflectively, “but the disturbance will no doubt come. You’re in harmony with the key-tone of this valley; but too much serenity isn’t good for me; and it’s probable that nobody ever retains it very long. There’s always the disturbing element in a world that’s full of men. It was, as I remarked, man who brought trouble into Paradise.”
Miss Kinnaird was addicted to talking a good deal of nonsense, and she frequently wearied her listeners; but there was a certain shrewdness in her, and at times she got near the truth. Indeed, her companion afterward decided that she had done so in this case. Ida Stirling had met many rising young men, and some who had made their mark, but none of them had aroused in her the faintest thrill of unrest or passion. So far, the depths of her nature had remained wholly unstirred. One could almost have told it from her laugh as she answered her companion’s last observation.
“I thought it was woman’s curiosity,” she said; and then remembered suddenly that on the previous evening she had certainly been a trifle curious about the strange packer from the railroad gang.