"And Bella is so silent, too. Hugh, it must have been a lonely life
for you before I came. Those two people, though they love you so much,
are not companionable. I think, Hugh, that they aren't able to
understand you. You are so brilliant, and they are so dull; you are
so articulate, and they are so dumb; you are so warm, so quick to
see, to feel, to sympathize, while they are so slow and so cold. Dear
Hugh, I'm glad I came. I am stupid myself, but I have enough
intelligence to understand you--a little, haven't I, dear?"

"So much more than enough!" The low speech with its tremor of humility
was almost lost.

"What a noise the river makes!" he said presently.

"Yes. And the pines. The whole air is full of rushing and sighing
and clapping and rattling. Sounds tell me so much now. They fill my
whole life. It is very queer. Why, a voice means more to me now, I
think, than a face ever did. . . . Is it a deep river, Hugh?"

"Now it is--deep and dangerous. But it goes down very quickly when
the snow at its source has melted. In summer it is a friendly little
brook, and in the fall a mere trickle that hardly wets your shoe.
I have a boat here tied to the root of one of these trees, a boat
I made myself, to pole across when the stream is too deep for wading.
I'll take you out in it when the flood's down; it wouldn't last
fifteen minutes now. In the spring, Sylvie, a nymph comes down from
the mountain, a wild white nymph. She has ice-green hair and
frost-white arms; you can see her lashing the water, and if you
listen, you can hear her sing and cry. Let's go in, dear; you're tired
and cold--I can feel you shivering. We'll start a big fire, and I'll