She was preening herself before a small mirror and did not notice the elderly man, who, under her fascination, was being transformed.
"You're a regular Frankenstein," he muttered, while the consciousness of the blue eyes in the dusky skin, the long slenderness of her body, and the hue of her strange hair grew upon him. "Do you know what a Frankenstein is?"
"No." And now Priscilla, weary of her play and self-contemplation, turned about and took a chair opposite Farwell. "Tell me."
So he told her, but she shook her head.
"You've only helped me to find myself; you did not make me," she said with a little sigh. "Oh, Mr. Farwell, I do—much thinking up at Lonely Farm. The winters are long, and the nights, too. You know there is a queer little plant beside the spring at the foot of our garden; it has roots long enough and thick enough for a thing twice its size. It grew strong and sure underground before it ventured up. It blossomed last summer; an odd flower it had. I think I am like that. You've taught me to—well, know myself. I shall not shame you, Master Farwell. You know we of the lonesome In-Place make friends with strange objects; everything in nature talks to us, if we will but listen. You have taught me to listen, too. Back a piece in the woods are a strong young hemlock and a little white birch. For years I have watched and tended them. When I was a small girl I likened the hemlock to you, sir, and there was I, leaning and huddling close to you, like the ghostly stripling of the woods. Well, I noticed to-day, Mr. Farwell, the birch stands quite securely; it doesn't bend for support on the hemlock, but it is standing friendly all the same. I think"—and here Priscilla clasped her hands close and outstretched them—"I think I am soon going away!"
Her eyes were tear-dimmed, her face very earnest.
"I wish—you would give up the childish folly, Priscilla." A fear rose in Farwell's eyes. "What could you, such an one as you have become, do out—in the States? It is madness—sheer, brutal madness."
Priscilla shook her head.
"You think it childish folly? Why, I have never lost sight of it for a day. You have not understood me if you have imagined that. I have always known I must go. Lately I have felt the nearness of the going, and it is the how to break away and begin that puzzle me. I am ready."
"Priscilla, you are a wild child still, playing with dangerous tools. You cannot comprehend the trouble into which you are willing, in your blindness, to plunge. Why, you are a—a woman; a beautiful one! Do you know what the world does with such, unless they are guarded and protected?"