Some one, he discovered then, had had taste enough to put flowers in the room. A great handful of daisies and clovers and delicate grasses stood on the sill of the window that looked out to where the narrow gulf separated the promontory from the mainland.
“Jane’s work,” said Van to himself; and as he thought it, he heard a slow, calm step coming through the entry, and Jane herself stood in the doorway.
Involuntarily he bent his head with such a reverence as he had never paid to woman before. He was the cynosure at home among all ladies, but none yet had won from him the reverent greeting of an utter self-forgetful absorption in another’s presence. The girl who stood there was not beautiful, though there was nothing in her features to displease the artist’s eye; indeed, the absence of mere material beauty made more marked the impression conveyed in movement and feature and face. Of all colors in the world—and Van was passionately fond of color—he loved best the gold that is sometimes seen in the western sky near where the sun is setting: a clear, fair hue that does not dazzle but rests the eyes that gaze upon it. Van thought of that color when he saw Jane’s face with its look of unclouded peace.
She lifted her eyes and glanced at him, at first with a tranquil, unmoved expression, as though it was quite indifferent to her who it was that she was meeting; then she gave a quicker, keener glance that thrilled Van with an uneasy sense that she was reading him through and through. What was it that she read? he wondered.
He tried to talk with her as she moved about the room, engaged in the very ordinary task of setting the supper-table. Her language showed some culture and refinement. He hazarded the question, “Are there good schools about here?”
“I do not know,” she said meditatively. “There is the district school.”
“Why does she not say, 'I went there’?” thought Van. “That would tell me something about herself.”
But more and more he found, as his talk went on, that Jane ignored herself. It did not appear to enter her mind that she was anybody to be thought of or talked about. He had at first to make conversation at the supper-table—the farm, the fisheries, the crops—but presently Jacob Escott made bold to ask: “What may be your occupation, sir?”
And, nothing loath, Van launched upon one of his pet topics—art and artists. Even the plain farmer and his wife enjoyed it. How could they resist the fascination of the merry stories, the musical voice, the face that spoke as clearly as the words? But Jane hardly listened, and suddenly a thought struck Van: “This is mere surface-talk after all. Can it be that this farmer’s girl cares for anything deeper, or is it only that she has not depth enough to care?”
They rose from the table, and Van followed Jane to the door. She did not see or heed him. The tide was at the full; wave upon wave came heaving gently onward toward the land as a child, tired out with play, comes home to its mother’s arms to rest; through the twilight the dark, restless mass of water and its ceaseless murmuring alike woke a sense of mystery and awe; above, in the darkening skies, a pale half-moon was shining and a few great throbbing stars. And in the dim light Van saw Jane’s face, and it seemed to him as beautiful and as full of mystery as sea and sky. Such a look of hunger marked it! He thought of Niobe, and of Cassandra, and of Mariana in the moated grange, but she differed in some inexplicable fashion from them all, and then he heard her say below her breath: “My God! My God! My God!”