And she framed her mouth with both hands and sent a long, clear call
floating out across the Gray Water.

"All right; I'll come!" shouted her brother. "Wait a moment!"

They waited many moments. Dusk, lurking in the forest, peered out,
casting a gray net over shore and water. A star quivered, another, then
ten, and scores and myriads.

They had found a seat on a fallen log; neither seemed to have very much
to say. For a while the steady splashing of the fish sounded like the
uninterrupted music of a distant woodland waterfall. Suddenly it ceased
as if by magic. Not another trout rose; the quiet was absolute.

"Is not this stillness delicious?" she breathed.

"It is sweeter when you break it."

"Please don't say such things.... _Can't_ you understand how much I want
you to be sincere to me? Lately, I don't know why, I've seemed to feel
so isolated. When you talk that way I feel more so. I--just want--a
friend."

There was a silence; then he said lightly:

"I've felt that way myself. The more friends I make the more solitary I
seem to be. Some people are fashioned for a self-imprisonment from which
they can't break out, and through which no one can penetrate. But I
never thought of you as one of those."