It again smote Septimius with a strange thrill of surprise to find the walk
which he himself had made, treading it, and smoothing it, and beating it
down with the pressure of his continual feet, from the time when the
tufted grass made the sides all uneven, until now, when it was such a
pathway as you may see through a wood, or over a field, where many feet
pass every day,--to find this track and exemplification of his own secret
thoughts and plans and emotions, this writing of his body, impelled by the
struggle and movement of his soul, claimed as her own by a strange girl
with melancholy eyes and voice, who seemed to have such a sad familiarity
with him.

"You are welcome to come here," said he, endeavoring at least to keep such
hold on his own property as was implied in making a hospitable surrender
of it to another.

"Yes," said the girl, "a person should always be welcome to his own."

A faint smile seemed to pass over her face as she said this, vanishing,
however, immediately into the melancholy of her usual expression. She went
along Septimius's path, while he stood gazing at her till she reached the
brow where it sloped towards Robert Hagburn's house; then she turned, and
seemed to wave a slight farewell towards the young man, and began to
descend. When her figure had entirely sunk behind the brow of the hill,
Septimius slowly followed along the ridge, meaning to watch from that
elevated station the course she would take; although, indeed, he would not
have been surprised if he had seen nothing, no trace of her in the whole
nearness or distance; in short, if she had been a freak, an illusion, of a
hard-working mind that had put itself ajar by deeply brooding on abstruse
matters, an illusion of eyes that he had tried too much by poring over the