"An old river man can look at the river and tell when a headrise is coming," he told her. "He knows by the looks of the water when the river is due to fall again. When he dreams, he says he knows what is going to happen, and where to find buried treasure, and if there is going to be an earthquake or a bad storm." "They get queer living alone!" she said, thoughtfully. "Lots of them used to stop in at our slough on Kaw River. I was afraid of them!" "You afraid of anything!" he exclaimed. "Of any one!" "Oh, that was a long time ago--ages ago!" She laughed, and then gave voice to that most tragic riverside thought. "But now--nothing at all matters now!" She said it with an intonation which was almost relief and laughing, that Terabon, whose mind had grappled for years with one of Ruskin's most touching phrases, understood how it could be that the heart of a human being could become so used to sorrows that no misery could bring tears. He knew in that very moment, as by revelation, that he had caught from her lips one of the bitterest phrases which the human mind is capable of forming. He was glad of the favour which fate had bestowed upon him, and he thrilled, while he regretted, that in that hour he could not forget that he was a seeker of facts, a gatherer of information. To match her mood was beyond his own power. By a simple statement of fact she had given herself a place in his thought comparable to--he went at making ideas again, despite himself--comparable to one of those wonderful widows which are the delight, while they rend to tatters the ambitions of delvers into the mysteries of Olympian lore. This bright, pretty, vivacious young woman had suffered till she had arrived at a Helen's recklessness--nothing mattered! There was a pause. "I think you are in a fair way to become unforgetable in connection with the Mississippi River," he suggested, with even voice. "What do you mean?" she demanded, quickly. "Well, I'll tell you," with the semblance of perfect frankness. "I've been wondering which one of the Grecian goddesses you would have been if you had lived, say, in Homer's time." "Which one of them I resemble?" she asked, amused. "Exactly that," he declared. "Oh, that's such a pretty compliment," she cried. "It fits so well into the things I've been thinking. The river grows and grows on me, and I feel as though I grew with it! You don't know--you could never know--you're a man--masculine! For the first time in my life I'm free--and--and I don't--I don't care a damn!" "But the future!" he protested, feebly. "That's it!" she retorted. "For a river goddess there is no future. It's all in the present for her, because she is eternal."