“_You_ frightened, Joan!” I exclaimed, with genuine surprise. “This is a new light on your wicked character. I thought the human being who could frighten you did not exist.” Then I suddenly realised she was talking seriously--looking to me for help of some kind--and at once I dropped the teasing attitude.
“He’s very far gone, I think, Joan,” I added gravely. “You must be kind to him, whatever else you may feel. He’s exceedingly fond of you.”
“I know, but I can’t help it,” she whispered, lest her voice should carry in the stillness; “there’s something about him that--that makes me feel creepy and half afraid.”
“But, poor man, it’s not his fault if he is delicate and sometimes looks like death,” I laughed gently, by way of defending what I felt to be a very innocent member of my sex.
“Oh, but it’s not that I mean,” she answered quickly; “it’s something I feel about him, something in his soul, something he hardly knows himself, but that may come out if we are much together. It draws me, I feel, tremendously. It stirs what is wild in me--deep down--oh, very deep down,--yet at the same time makes me feel afraid.”
“I suppose his thoughts are always playing about you,” I said, “but he’s nice-minded and----”
“Yes, yes,” she interrupted impatiently, “I can trust myself absolutely with him. He’s gentle and singularly pure-minded. But there’s something else that----” She stopped again sharply to listen. Then she came up close beside me in the darkness, whispering--
“You know, Mr. Hubbard, sometimes my intuitions warn me a little too strongly to be ignored. Oh yes, you needn’t tell me again that it’s difficult to distinguish between fancy and intuition. I know all that. But I also know that there’s something deep down in that man’s soul that calls to something deep down in mine. And at present it frightens me. Because I cannot make out what it is; and I know, I _know_, he’ll do something some day that--that will shake my life to the very bottom.” She laughed a little at the strangeness of her own description.
I turned to look at her more closely, but the darkness was too great to show her face. There was an intensity, almost of suppressed passion, in her voice that took me completely by surprise.