‘And so it is that you love me without shyness,’ she went on, marvellously linking in with his thought; ‘I am intimate with you as your own soul, and our relations are pure with the purity that was before man. There can be no secrets between us, or possibility of secrets, for your most hidden dreams are also mine. So mingled with your ultimate being am I, in fact, that sometimes you dare not recognise me as separate, and all that appears on the surface of your dear mind must first filter through myself. Why!’ she cried, with a sudden rush of mischievous laughter, ‘I even know what you are made of; why your queer heart has never been able to satisfy itself—to “grow up,” as you call it; and all about this endless desire you have to find God, which is really nothing but the search to find your true inner Self.’ ‘Tell me! tell me!’ he cried. ‘Besides the sun,’ she went on with a strange swiftness of words, ‘there’s the wind and the rain in you; yes, and moon and stars as well. That’s why the fire and restlessness of the imagination for ever tear you. No mere form of expression can ever satisfy _that_, but only increase it; for it means your desire to know reality, to know beauty, to know your own soul; to know—God! Your blood has kinship with those tides that flow through all space, even to the gates of the stars; dawns and sunsets, moonrise and meteors haunt your thoughts with their magic lights; wild flowers of the fields and hillside nod beside you while you sleep; and the winds, laughing and sighing, lift your dreams upon vast wings and flash with them beyond the edges of the universe!’ ‘Stop,’ he cried with passion, ‘you are telling all my secrets.’ ‘I am telling them only to myself,’ she laughed, ‘and therefore to you. For I know all the fevers of your soul. The wilderness calls you and the great woods. You are haunted by the faces of the world’s forgotten places. Your imagination plays with the lightning about the mountain tops, and seeks primeval forests and the shores of desolate seas....’ Paul listened spellbound while she put some of the most intangible of his fancies into the language of poetry. Yet she spoke with the quiet simplicity of true things. The man felt his soul shake with delight to hear her. Again and again, while she spoke, the feeling came to him that in another moment her face must clear and he would know her; yet the actual second of recognition never appeared. The girl’s true identity continued to evade him. The enticing uncertainty added enormously to her charm. It evoked in him even the sense of worship. ‘And this shall be the earnest of our ideal companionship,’ she whispered, holding up a spray of leaves which she proceeded to fasten into the buttonhole of his coat; ‘the symbol by which you shall always know me—the sign of my presence in your heart.’