Willard's landlady smiled sympathetically across the narrow breakfast-table. "I guess you've got to stay in this mornin', Mr. Willard," she said. "It's a good deal too raw and cold for you to be out around, paintin', to-day."
Willard nodded. "Quite right, Mrs. Storrs," he returned, and he smiled at his landlady's daughter, who sat opposite. But she did not smile at him. She continued her silent meal, looking for the most part at her plate, and replying to direct questions only by monosyllables.
She must be nineteen or twenty, he decided, but her slender, curveless figure might have been that of a girl several years younger. Her face was absolutely without character to the casual glance—pale, slightly freckled, lighted by grey-green, half-closed eyes, and framed in light brown hair. Her lips were thin, and her rare smile did not disclose her teeth. Even her direct look, when he compelled it, was quite uninterested.
Her mother chattered with volubility of a woman left much alone, and glad of an appreciative listener, but the girl had not, of her own accord, spoken a word during his week's stay. He wondered as he thought of it why he had not noticed it before, and decided that her silence was not obtrusive, but only the outcome of her colourless personality—like the silence of the prim New England house itself.
He groaned inwardly. "What in time can I do? Nothing to read within five miles: my last cigar gone yesterday: this beastly weather driving me to melancholia! If she weren't such a stick—heavens! I never knew a girl could be so thin!"
The girl in question rose and began clearing the table. Her mother bustled out of the room, and left Willard in the old-fashioned arm-chair by the window, almost interested, as he wondered what the girl would do or say now. After five minutes of silence he realised the strange impression, or rather the lack of impression, she made on him. He was hardly conscious of a woman's presence. The intangible atmosphere of femininity that wraps around a tête-à-tête with even the most unattractive woman was wholly lacking. She seemed simply a more or less intelligent human being.
Given greatly to analysis, he grew interested. Why was this? She was not wanting intellectually, he was sure. Such remarks as she had made in answer to his own were not noticeable for stupidity or even stolidity of thought. He broke the silence.
"What do you do with yourself, these days?" he suggested. "I don't see you about at all. Are you reading, or walking about these fascinating Maine beaches?"
She did not even look up at him as she replied. "I don't know as I do very much of anything. I'm not very fond of reading—at least, not these books."
Remembering the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Book of Martyrs," "Mrs. Heman's Poems," and the "Adventures of Rev. James Hogan, Missionary to the Heathen of Africa," that adorned the marble-topped table in the parlour, he shuddered sympathetically.