Nicholas looked at her a little fearfully. It had seemed to him that in a great world of light he had always moved in a little hollow of darkness and detachment. Were there, then, other hollows like that? Places to which outstretched hands never penetrate? A great understanding possessed him, and he burst out in an effort to express it.
"You're a funny girl," he said.
She flushed, and suddenly lifted one hand and looked at it. Nicholas watched her now intently. She studied the back of her hand, turned it, and sat absorbedly examining her little thumb. And Nicholas felt a sudden sense of understanding, of gladness that he understood. As he felt when he was afraid and wretched, so Elfa was feeling now.
He leaned toward her.
"Don't feel afraid," he said gently.
She shook her head.
"I don't," she said; "I don't, truly. I guess that's why I stayed here now. She won't be back till ten—I ought to have said so before. You—you won't want to wait so long."
He rose at once. And now, being at his ease, his head was erect, his arms naturally fallen, his face as confident and as occupied by his spirit as when he lay alone in the meadows.
"Well, sir," he said, "let's shake hands again!"
She gave him her hand and, in their peculiarly winning upward look, her eyes—blue, wide, watchful, with that brooding mother watchfulness of some women, even in youth. And her hand met his in the clasp which is born of the simple, human longing of kind for kind.