e far enough;
maybe I wanted too much for her--all the things it seems to me a woman
in this life ought to have--and that I hadn't understood what made
Moira the way she was. No wonder he loved her. I wish I could make you
feel the way Moira looked. You had to feel it in your heart some way.
She was fair and her face was tanned with the wind to a lovely golden
color and her cheeks were smooth like ripe fruit and her eyes were blue
and steady, so dark sometimes they seemed black--seeing eyes, that
looked beyond what Mis' MacFarland called "the veil of things." She
always seemed to me as if the spirit of the sea and the dunes between
them was more her father and mother than anything else. That's a
fanciful idea, but she gave you thoughts like that. She was the kind
that makes even plain bodies like me fanciful.

There was days when she looked to me like something out of a lovely
dream--if you can imagine a girl that's been dreamed by the sea and the
dunes come true.

I can't quite tell when I first sensed what Kenneth felt about the times
Moira was _away_, for as she went to the back country--you know how wild
and secret that back country behind the town is--so there was what you
might call the back country of the spirit she used to go to. I guess I
found out how he felt one afternoon when he was waiting for her to come
back from the dunes. She flew in as if she was helped by wings and she
was _listening_--I'd got so used to it by now, it was so part of her,
that I forgot how it might strike lots of folks.

He jumped toward her. "Oh, I've been waiting such a time, Moira! I'm so
glad you're back!"

I knew he'd seen she was "away" and he was putting himself between her
and whatever it was. For a moment she stood looking at him puzzled, as
if it had taken her a minute to come back, and then she was as glad to
see him as he was her.

"Well," thinks I, "when she gets married all her odd ways will go."

I took to watching them, and then and again I'd see him, as you might
say, bring her back to real earth from the shining spot to which her
thoughts went. Then sometimes after he'd go she'd be restless like she
was when she was little when she'd lost "her good."

I could tell Mis' MacFarland was watching her, too, as she'd sit there
praying like she did so much of the time, though it often seemed to me
that her prayers wasn't so much prayers as a kind of getting near to
those she loved.

I was sure then, as I ever was o