She paused a moment, peering round the room and out of the blindless windows into the darkening valley. “Now, _he_”--pointing with her thumb in the direction of the kitchen--“is all new to me, and I have no feeling about him at all. But you! Why, I always know where you are, and what you’ll be doing next, and saying, and even what you’re thinking and feeling half the time--jest as I do with Julius--almost.” The next minute came the direct question that I dreaded. It was like a pistol shot: “And you feel the same, Professor? You feel it, too? You know all about me--and this great wonderful thing that’s creepin’ up nearer all the time. Don’t you, now?” I looked straight at her over the big lamp-shade, feeling that some part of me went lost in the depths of those strange, peering eyes. There was a touch of authority in her face--about lips and mouth--that I had seen once before. For an instant it hovered there while she waited for my reply. It lifted the surface plainness of her expression into a kind of solemn beauty. Her charm poured over me envelopingly. “There is,” I stammered, “a curious sense of intimacy between us--all, and it is very delightful. It comes to me rather like childhood memories revived. The loneliness of this valley,” I added, sinking my voice lest its trembling should be noticeable, “may account for a good many strange feelings, but it’s the peace and loveliness that should make the chief appeal.” The searching swiftness of the look she flashed upon me, faintly touched with scorn, I have seen sometimes in the eyes of a child who knows an elder says vain things for its protection in the dark. Such weak attempts but bring the reality nearer. “Oh, I feel that too--the loveliness--right enough,” she said at once, her eyes still fixed on mine, “but I mean these other things as well.” Her tone, her phrase, assumed that I also was aware of them. “Where do they come from? What are they exactly? I often fancy there’s lots of other people up here besides ourselves, only they’re hidden away always--watchin’, waitin’ for something to happen--something that’s being got ready like. Oh, but it’s a splendid feeling, too, and makes me feel alive all over.” She sat up and clapped her hands softly like a child, but there was awe as well as joy in her. “And it comes from the woods and sky somehow--like wind and lightning. God showed Himself once, didn’t He, in a burnin’ bush and in a mighty rushin’ wind?” “Nature seems very real in a place like this,” I said hurriedly. “We see no other human beings. Imagination grows active and constructs----” The instant way she swept aside the evasive reply I was so proud of made me feel foolish. “Imagination,” she said firmly, yet with a bewitching smile, “is not making up. It’s finding out. You know that!”