"Nothing—everything. Did you change those library books?"
"Yes. But listen to me, Elizabeth. I will tell you how your going away and coming back has changed things. I'm changed; I feel softer and harder, more sympathetic and less so. I feel—oh, how shall I put it? I feel like a tiny speck of God that can't help seeing all round and through everything. I seem to know the reason for things, somewhere inside of me, only it won't get right into my brain. I don't think I love Mother any less than I did, and I don't think I really hate Seabourne any less; but I can't worry about her or it, and that's where I've changed. I've got a feeling that Mother had to be and Seabourne had to be and that you and I had to be, too; that it's all just a necessary part of the whole. And after all, Elizabeth, if you hadn't gone away and I hadn't been frightfully unhappy there wouldn't have been your coming back and my happiness over that. I think it was worth the unhappiness."
They stood still, staring at the sunset. A sweet, damp smell was coming up from the ground; there had been a little shower. The sea lay very quiet and vast, flecked here and there with afterglow. Down below them the lights of Seabourne sprang into being, one by one; they looked small and unnaturally bright. The ugly homes from which they shone were mercifully hidden in the dusk. Only their lights appeared, elusive, beckoning, never quite still. Around them little hidden specks of life were making indefinable noises; a blur of rustlings, chirpings, buzzings. They were very busy, these hidden people, with their secret activities. Presently it would be night; already the moon was showing palely opposite the sunset.
Elizabeth turned her gaze away from the sky and looked at Joan. The girl was standing upright with her head a little back. She had taken off her hat, and the queer light fell slantwise across her broad forehead, and dipped into her wide open eyes that held in their depths a look of fear. Her lips were parted as if to speak, but no words came. She stretched out a hand, without looking at Elizabeth, as though groping for protection. Elizabeth took the hand and held it firmly in her own.
"Are you frightened, Joan?" she asked softly.
"A little; how did you know?"
"Your eyes looked scared. Why are you frightened? I thought you were so confident just now."
"I don't know, but it's all so strange, somehow. I think it's the newness I told you about that frightens me, now I come to think of it. You seem new. Do you feel new, Elizabeth?"
Elizabeth dropped the hand and turned away.
"Not particularly," she said; "I'm getting rather old for that sort of thing; if I let myself feel new I might forget how old I'm getting. No, I don't think I'd better feel too new, or you might get more frightened still; you told me you were frightened of me once, do you remember?"