"I was his classmate at the university. Then, fifteen years ago, I met him in Southern Russia. We had a couple of weeks together, and then I must hurry on to Constantinople, where I was due. He went into the Caucasus. I lost sight of him. It was two years later that I heard of that accident which blinded him, and I've heard since only second-and third-hand things. The other day in the club a man told me that he was living where his people had lived, down here in Virginia. I meant to go to see him, but I meant to write first." "I am a visitor at Sweet Rocket. But I am sure that Mr. Linden would wish you to come on to the house. Had you not better do so?" "Why, yes, then, I think that I shall." He stood up from the hemlock roots. "You are very good. My name is Curtin--Martin Curtin." She gave her own. He took up fisherman's paraphernalia and a light coat. They moved out of ravine into meadow strip; before them lay the jewel valley. Mr. Curtin drew a deep breath. "And he hasn't eyes to look at it!" Anna Darcy found herself answering with certitude. "He sees it and a thousand places beside." They walked on, Mr. Curtin gazing at river, hills, and mountains, and quiet valley floor. "I have known of his doing some splendid things in life--simple and splendid--the kind that steals into folk, and they do likewise!" "Yes, I should think that." "What is that house?" "In old times it is the overseer's house. Now the young farmer who helps him lives there." "'In old times it _is_'--that's an unusual phrase." "I mean that to me, for reasons, it stays that way and _is_." "I agree! When you turn to a thing it _is_. Turn with decision enough, and your overseer would come out to meet you. That's a sycamore for you! Do you ever feel the Indians by these streams? If you can see your overseer you can see your Indians, too." They walked on. "Is that the house?" "Yes." "It's a simple place, too--but I like it. Houses, now! I make a specialty of keeping them in duration." Anna Darcy thought, "A week ago I wouldn't have understood that." The house where she was born, the house facing, across a row of box and a finely wrought iron paling, the old, leafy city square, walked bodily into her. She was through it, up and down, like the air. It seemed to her that there wasn't anything she didn't know about it, and it all came together into an inner aroma, taste and tone, dry, warm, pungent and likable, idiosyncratic, its very own. It had been a loss, a grief, when the city had taken and torn down that house. And all the time it was waiting for her, in a deep reality, to walk in and take possession! She thought: "What is happening? I shall never be lonely again!" Mr. Curtin looked from side to side of Sweet Rocket valley. "It's like a beaker of Venetian glass! You'd say there was a magic drink in it.... But how clean and drenched with sun is this air!" "Yes!" "He never married? Archer said he thought not." "No, he didn't marry."