“Well, it isn’t worth while to bother about me,” she said. “I shall be gone some day.”
“I fear you will,” he answered, with feeling; “I have thought of it a thousand times, and dreaded to enter the house, lest I should not find you there. A sense of your impermanence is always with me. You don’t belong here in any sense, and I fear that Fate will not let you stay much longer. There is an unreality about your being here at all that is like the experiences we have when we sleep, real enough while they are occurring, but unreal to remember. Yes, you will be gone some day. Therefore, I shall take Fate by the forelock and go first, that I may not be here when you leave. I could not endure that. The very sight of the old house and this tree would then be intolerable to me.”
His face and speech were impassioned, but the girl saw it not. That was what made her so exasperating to those whom she fascinated. She seemed incapable of seeing that she could fascinate. The truth was she was self-absorbed.
“You would miss me, I am sure,” she said, in the most matter-of-fact tone, “and I should miss you greatly, if you were gone.”
“Where will you go to when you leave here?” he asked.
“To my own people, I hope,” she answered, dreamily, her eyes wandering away to the horizon.
“Tell me about them,” he begged. “I have often tried to lead you to talk of them, but you never would. You are a tell-all, tell-nothing sort of person. Others do not notice that, but I do, and have woven some theories about it.”
“I dare say they do me great honor, but in all probability they are far from true.”
“Well, then, why will you not tell me about yourself?” he asked, in an injured tone.
“You talk as though I have been making history on this planet for ages. I am young; what could I have to tell that would satisfy your expectation of the extraordinary. You have known me here in this house for more than two years. As the Indians in the old story-books say, we have ‘eaten salt together daily,’ and we have walked and talked together with the freedom of children. What is there of me still unrevealed?”