“You have met them,” he said, a part of her spirit almost. “I have seen them in your eyes. It gave me the sense of shelter with you and limitless understanding---” “I am thankful for that,” she whispered. “When we have understanding, we have everything. Those who in their childhood are made to suffer horribly are often the ones who reach understanding. Sometimes they suffer too much and become dulled and dumb. Sometimes in the very ache of their story, which can be so rarely told, they risk the telling to some one not ready. It aches so, as its stays and stays untold. Oh, the whole world craves understanding, and yet if we tell our story to one who is not ready--we hurt them and ourselves, and add unto our misery. There are moments set apart in life in which one finds understanding, but the world presses in the next day, and the story does not look so well. The spirit of it fades and the actions do not seem pure when the spirit is out--so one loses a loved friend. Oh, I am talking vaguely. It is not my way to talk vaguely--but to-night--it is like a division of roads, and a story is to be told---” “Do you think the story will diminish in my mind to-morrow?” he asked. “No--not you. I have seen you through the sunlight and the dark looking into my eyes for it. If I thought it would diminish in your mind--yes, I would tell it just the same. It must be told--but life would not be the same. Even this, our little stone cot, would not be the same. I should have to become harder and harder to hold--to follow the Gleam---- “... I shall be Olga in the rest of the story,” she was saying. “For I am Olga.... The truth is, I have no other name. There is one that I used, and another that I formerly used--but they are not mine. You shall see.... My father prospered with the sheep-raising, and slowly on the long road that you have seen, houses came one by one, until at last there was a village about us. My father was like the village father, and my mother the source of its wisdom in doctoring and maternal affairs--she had learned by bringing forth. But I was not of them--they all saw that. The coming of plenty, the coming of the people, the coming of men to woo my sisters, and the maidens my brothers brought for us to see, before they took them quite away--none of these things were so real to me as the coming of my Guest when I was such a little girl. And none remembered that--not even my mother. Until I ceased to speak of it, they tried to make me think it was a dream. But I knew that rapture. It had changed me. I was always to search for it again. I was always looking for another such night--for that afterglow again. I was the last child and the silent one.