She looked puzzled and wrote, “What else should you call me? That is my name. Everybody calls me that.” “But I am such a stranger to you that perhaps you would wish me to call you Miss Gordon.” “Oh, no, I would not like that,” she wrote quickly, with a distressed look on her face. “Nobody ever calls me that. It would make me feel as if I were not myself but somebody else. And you do not seem like a stranger to me. Is there any reason why you should not call me Kilmeny?” “No reason whatever, if you will allow me the privilege. You have a very lovely name--the very name you ought to have.” “I am glad you like it. Do you know that I was called after my grandmother and she was called after a girl in a poem? Aunt Janet has never liked my name, although she liked my grandmother. But I am glad you like both my name and me. I was afraid you would not like me because I cannot speak.” “You can speak through your music, Kilmeny.” She looked pleased. “How well you understand,” she wrote. “Yes, I cannot speak or sing as other people can, but I can make my violin say things for me.” “Do you compose your own music?” he asked. But he saw she did not understand him. “I mean, did any one ever teach you the music you played here that evening?” “Oh, no. It just came as I thought. It has always been that way. When I was very little Neil taught me to hold the violin and the bow, and the rest all came of itself. My violin once belonged to Neil, but he gave it to me. Neil is very good and kind to me, but I like you better. Tell me about yourself.” The wonder of her grew upon him with every passing moment. How lovely she was! What dear little ways and gestures she had--ways and gestures as artless and unstudied as they were effective. And how strangely little her dumbness seemed to matter after all! She wrote so quickly and easily, her eyes and smile gave such expression to her mobile face, that voice was hardly missed. They lingered in the orchard until the long, languid shadows of the trees crept to their feet. It was just after sunset and the distant hills were purple against the melting saffron of the sky in the west and the crystalline blue of the sky in the south. Eastward, just over the fir woods, were clouds, white and high heaped like snow mountains, and the westernmost of them shone with a rosy glow as of sunset on an Alpine height. The higher worlds of air were still full of light--perfect, stainless light, unmarred of earth shadow; but down in the orchard and under the spruces the light had almost gone, giving place to a green, dewy dusk, made passionately sweet with the breath of the apple blossoms and mint, and the balsamic odours that rained down upon them from the firs.