Moira gave her wide comprehending silence.

The best of all was on evenings when the stars came out first, and then as
the two sat watching them from the Round Stone they suddenly began to
pale, and the moon flashed into sight, rising swiftly over the mountain
Moira called "The Hill o' Delights," because it was from a wide, white
door in it that the rushing, light-footed little people came out every
evening when the twilight fell and the harsh endeavor of human life was
stilled to peace. There was neither talk nor music on those evenings, but
a silence full, like the lovely world about them, of unsaid, quivering
joy. Sometimes Timothy would turn after such a long time of deep and
cheering mutual knowledge of how fair were all things, and find Moira
slipped away from beside him; but so impalpable was the companionship she
gave him in the strange and sweet confusion of his thoughts that he did
not feel himself alone, though she might be already deep in the pines
behind him.

The girl grew taller, but the cool whiteness of her face was untinged by
any flush of young maidenhood. At seventeen she was a slender sprite of a
girl, to reach whose unearthly aloofness the warm human hands of her
companions strained unavailing. Each winter she descended to the valley
and to school and church, a silent, remote child, moving like one in a
dream. And every spring she came back to the hill, to Timothy and his
pipes, to the pines and the uplands, to the Round Stone and the white road
in front of it. Ralph Wilcox, hearty, kindly son of his hearty, kindly
parents, tried to speak to her long enough to make her seem real, but she
was rarely in the house except during the day and a half of each week when
her father was there; and on their casual encounters out of doors she
melted from before his eyes like a pixie, knowing the hiding places and
turns of his own land better than he. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of her