"Then I love to look at you; for you may be dreaming of me. I watch you much longer than you can tell; but I do not look at you too long at a time for fear my eyes should awaken you." "But what makes you do this?" "Do I not tell you? Besides," and she averted her face and gave me a sweet shy look, "my watching might make you dream of me." "But could not I dream of you as well when you are by my side?" She shook her head. "No. You can make people dream of you by looking at them in their sleep." "Nonsense, Geraldine," I exclaimed, a little warmly; "this is some crazy old woman's belief: you must not think such things." I saw her upturned eyes slowly cloud with tears. Her beauty, too, suddenly took the same intensely plaintive and piteous expression I had marked in her when I had seen her walking in her sleep. "You are angry with me, Arthur." "No, dearest," I answered, kissing the tears from her eyes, "I am not angry with you. I only think you should not indulge such foolish fancies." She smiled. It was like an April sunbeam shining after a shower. Springing from her knees, "Now for my drawing!" she exclaimed. She drew a chair to the table and went to work at once. Some time after this, in going upstairs I met Mrs. Williams. She stepped aside to let me pass, but I paused on the landing. I had an idea that she was a much shrewder woman than her calm, pleasant, but not highly intelligent countenance would have suggested. I called her to the window on the landing and pointed to the front garden. Geraldine stood at the fountain making a cup of her hands to receive one of the silver threads of water which fell into the brimming basin. "She seems as happy as a child here, does she not?" I said. "She is like a child, Sir; innocent and gay as any little girl of five." "And yet she is very womanly too; and it is this combination of gravity and simplicity that makes her so fascinating. Do you often talk with her, Mrs. Williams?" "Sometimes, Sir." "What do you talk about?" "Oh, of different things." "I dare say she puzzles your plain understanding?" I said, with a laugh, whose artificiality made it worse than my gravity. "She has a way of breaking off in her speech, of jumping from one idea to another, that must make her sometimes difficult for you to understand, eh?" She glanced at me and quickly averted her eyes to the garden. "Mistress," she said, "doesn't always talk quite collectedly." "You have hit it exactly. She is sometimes a little incoherent." "She is, Sir; but that comes, I am sure, from too much good spirits. She's as bright and brisk as a bird which the eye can't always follow." "Do you really think this way of hers comes from her good spirits?" "I beg you'll excuse me, Sir," she remarked, folding her hands, "but I should like to know what you think."