Part 3 (2/2)

(here Nella-Rose clasped her hands excitedly and her breath came short), ”and then I saw it a-coming and a-coming. The big fire-eye a-glaring and the mighty noise a-snorting and I reckoned it was old Master Satan and I just--couldn't move!”

”Go on! go on!” Truedale bent close to her--she had caught him in the mesh of her dramatic charm.

”I saw it a-coming, and set on--on devouring o' me, and still I couldn't stir. Everything was growing black and black except a big square with that monster eye a-glaring into the soul o' me!”

The girl's face was set--her eyes vacant and wild; suddenly they softened, and her little white teeth showed through the childish, parted lips.

”Then the eye went away, there was a blackness in the square place, and then a face came--a kind face it was--all a-laughing and it--it kept going farther and farther off to one side and I kept a-following and a-following and then--the big noise went rus.h.i.+ng by me, and there I was right safe and plump up against a tree!”

”Good Lord!” Again Truedale wiped his brow.

”Since then,” Nella-Rose relaxed, ”I can shut my eyes and always there is the black square and sometimes--not always, but sometimes--things come!”

”The face, Nella-Rose?”

”No, I can't make that come. But things I want to, do and have. I always think, when I see things, that I'm going to do a big, fine thing some day. I feel upperty and then--poof! off go the pictures and I am just--lil' Nella-Rose again!”

A comically heavy sigh brought Truedale back to earth.

”But the face you saw long ago,” Truedale whispered, ”was it my face, do you think?”

Nella-Rose paused--then quietly:

”I--reckon it was. Yes, I'm mighty sure it was your face. When I saw it at that window”--she pointed across the room--”I certainly thought my eyes were closed and that--it had come--the kind, good face that saved me!” A sweet, friendly smile wreathed the girl's lips and she rose with rare dignity and held out her thin, delicate hand:

”Mister Outlander, we're going to be neighbours, aren't we?”

”Yes--neighbours!” Truedale took the hand with a distinct sense of suffocation, ”but why do you call me an outlander?”

”Because--you are! You're not _of_ our mountains.”

”No, I wish I were!”

”Wis.h.i.+ng can't make you. You are--or you aren't.”

Truedale noted the girl's language. Distorted and crude as it often was, it was never positively illiterate. This surprised him.

”You--oh! you're not going yet!” He put his hand out, for the definite way in which Nella-Rose turned was ominous. Already she seemed to belong to the cabin room--to Truedale himself. Not a suggestion of strangeness clung to her. It was as if she had always been there but that his eyes had been holden.

”I must go!”

”Wait--oh! Nella-Rose. Let me walk part of the way with you. I--I have a thousand things to say.”

But she was gone out of the door, down the path.

Truedale stood and looked after her until the long shadows reached up to Lone Dome's sharpest edge. White's dogs began nosing about, suggesting attention to affairs nearer at hand. Then Truedale sighed as if waking from a dream. He performed the duties Jim had left to his tender mercy--the feeding of the animals, the piling up of wood. Then he forced himself to take a long walk. He ate his evening meal late, and finally sat down to his task of writing letters. He wrote six to Brace Kendall and tore them up; he wrote one to his uncle and put it aside for consideration when the effect of his day dreams left him sane enough to judge it. Finally he managed a note to Dr. McPherson and one to Lynda Kendall.

”I think”--so the letter to Lynda ran--”that I will work regularly, now, on the play. With more blood in my own body I can hope to put more into that. I'm going to get it out to-morrow and begin the infusion. I wish you were here to-night--to see the wonderful effect of the moon on the mists--but there! if I said more you might guess where I am. When I come back I shall try to describe it and some day you must see it. Several times lately I have imagined an existence here with one's work and enough to subsist on. No worry, no nerve-racking, and always the tremendous beauty to inspire one! Nothing seems wholly real here.”

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