She had been aware that Marsh was looking at her as she spoke. What a

singular, piercing eye he had! It made her a little restive, as at a

too-intimate contact, to be looked at so intently, although she was

quite aware that there was a good deal of admiration in the look. She

wondered what he was thinking about her; for it was evident that he was

thinking about her, as he sent out that penetrating gaze.

But perhaps not, after all; for he now said as if in answer to her last

remark, "I have my own way of believing that, too, that all people are

made of the same stuff. Mostly I find them perfectly negligible, too

utterly without savor even to glance at. Once in a thousand years, it

seems to me, you come across a human being who's alive as you are, who

speaks your language, is your own kind, belongs to you. When you do,

good Lord! What a moment!"

He pronounced this in a perfectly impersonal tone, but something about

the quality of his voice made Marise flash a quick glance at him. His

eyes met hers with a sudden, bold deepening of their gaze. Marise's

first impulse was to be startled and displeased, but in an instant a

quick fear of being ridiculous had voiced itself and was saying to her,

"Don't be countrified. It's only that I've had no contact with

people-of-the-world for a year now. That's the sort of thing they get

their amusement from. It would make him laugh to have it resented."

Aloud she said, rather at random, "I usually go down once a season to

the city for a visit to this old friend of mine, and other friends

there. But this last winter I didn't get up the energy to do that."

"I should think," said Mr. Welles, "that last winter you'd have used up

all your energy on other things, from what Mrs. Powers tells me about

the big chorus you always lead here in winters."

"That does take up a lot of time," she admitted. "But it's a generator

of energy, leading a chorus is, not a spender of it."

"Oh, come!" protested Marsh. "You can't put that over on me. To do it as

I gather you do . . . heavens! You must pour out your energy and

personality as though you'd cut your arteries and let the red flood

come."

"You pour it out all right," she agreed, "but you get it back a thousand

times over." She spoke seriously, the topic was vital to her, her eyes

turned inward on a recollection. "It's amazing. It's enough to make a

mystic out of a granite boulder. I don't know how many times I've

dragged myself to a practice-evening dog-tired physically with work and

care of the children, stale morally, sure that I had nothing in me that

was profitable for any purpose, feeling that I'd do anything to be

allowed to stay at home, to doze on the couch and read a poor novel."

She paused, forgetting to whom she was speaking, forgetting she was not

alone, touched and stirred with a breath from those evenings.




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