He looked at her. And this was as if he were seeing her for the first time. "_Cried?_" he repeated. "Nobody ever shakes hands with me," Elfa told him. He stared at her as she sat on the edge of her chair, her plump hands idle on her apron. "No," he admitted, "no, I don't suppose they do. I didn't think--" But he had not thought of her at all. "By the door all day I let in hand-shakes," she said, "an' then I let 'em out again. But I don't get any of 'em for me." That, Nicholas saw, was true enough. Even he had been mortified because he had taken her hand. "Once," Elfa said, "I fed a woman at the back door. An' when she went she took hold o' my hand, thankful. An' then you done it too--like it was a mistake. That's all, since I worked out. I don't know folks outside much, only some that don't shake hands, 'count of seemin' ashamed to." "I know," said Nicholas. "Sometimes," she went on, "folks come here an' walk in to see _her_ an' they don't shake. Ain't it funny--when folks can an' don't? When they come from the city to-morrow, the whole house'll shake hands, but me. Once I went to prayer-meetin' an' I hung around waitin' to see if somebody wouldn't. But they didn't--any of 'em. It was rainin' outside an' I guess they thought I come with somebody's rubbers." 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. "Good-by," she answered his good-by, and they both laughed a little in a shyness which was a way of delight.