It was after the last of these interesting statements that she was suddenly aware of the sound of her own voice, as though it had been a brazen gong beating stridently in the vastness of a deserted Cathedral. She saw the old lady take two pieces of buttered toast from the china dish, hold them tenderly in her hand and fling them a swift, bird-like glance before she devoured them; during that moment's vision Maggie discovered what so many people of vaster experience both of life and of Mrs. Warlock had never discovered; namely, that the old lady cared more for her food than her company. Maggie was suddenly less afraid of the whole family. She looked up then at Martin as though she thus would prove her new courage and, he glancing across at the same moment, they smiled. He left his father's side and, coming over to her, sat down close to her. He dropped his voice in speaking to her.
"I've been wanting to see you," he said.
"Why?" she asked him.
"Well," he answered, smiling at her as though he wanted to tell her something privately. "I feel as though we'd got a lot to tell one another ... I'm a stranger here really quite as much as you."
"No, you're not," she said. "You can't be so MUCH a stranger anywhere because you've been all over the world and are ready for anything."
"And you?"
"I don't seem to manage the simplest things. Aunt Elizabeth and I get lost the moment we move outside the door ... Do you like my dress?" she asked him.
"Why!" he said, obviously startled by such a question. "It's—it's splendid!"
"No, you know it isn't," she answered quickly, dropping her voice into a confidential statement. "It's all wrong. I thought you'd know why as you've been everywhere. Caroline Smith helped me to choose it, and it looked all right until I wore it. It's me ... I'm hopeless to fit. Caroline says so. I don't care about clothes—if only I looked just like anybody else I'd never bother again—but it's so tiresome to have taken so much trouble and then for it to be all wrong."
Martin was then aware of many things—that this was a strange unusual girl, that she reassured him as to her interest, her vitality, her sincerity as no girl had ever done before, that his sister was aware of their intimate conversation and that she resented it, and that he must see this girl again and as soon as possible. He was as liable as any young man in the world to the most sudden and most violent enthusiasms, but they had been enthusiasms for a pretty face, for a sensual appeal, for a sentimental moment. Here there was no prettiness, no sensuality, no sentiment. There was something so new that he felt like Cortez upon his peak in Darien.