there had come into her mind a quick discomfort at the
contrast between her appearance and that of Eugenia.

CHAPTER XV

HOME LIFE

July 20.

The heat was appalling even early in the morning, right after breakfast.
There were always three or four such terrific days, even up here in the
mountains, to remind you that you lived in America and had to take your
part of the ferocious extremes of the American climate.

And of course this had to be the time when Toucle went off for one of
her wandering disappearances. Marise could tell that by the aspect of
the old woman as she entered the kitchen that morning, her reticule bag
bulging out with whatever mysterious provisions Toucle took with her.
You never missed anything from the kitchen.

Marise felt herself in such a nervously heightened state of
sensitiveness to everything and everybody in those days, that it did not
surprise her to find that for the first time she received something more
than a quaint and amusing impression from the old aborigine. She had
never noticed it before, but sometimes there was something about
Toucle's strange, battered, leathery old face . . . what was it? The idea
came to her a new one, that Toucle was also a person, not merely a
curious and enigmatic phenomenon.

Toucle was preparing to depart in the silent, unceremonious,
absent-minded way she did everything, as though she were the only person
in the world. She opened the screen door, stepped out into the torrid
glare of the sunshine and, a stooped, shabby, feeble old figure, trudged
down the path.

"Where does she go?" thought Marise, and "What was that expression on
her face I could not name?"

Impulsively she went out quickly herself, and followed after the old
woman.

"Toucle! Toucle!" she called, and wondered if her voice in these days
sounded to everyone as nervous and uncertain as it did to her.

The old woman turned and waited till the younger had overtaken her. They
were under the dense shade of an old maple, beside the road, as they
stood looking at each other.

As she had followed, Marise regretted her impulse, and had wondered what
in the world she could find to say, but now that she saw again the
expression in the other's face, she cried out longingly, "Toucle, where
do you go that makes you look peaceful?"

The old woman glanced at her, a faint surprise appearing in her deeply
lined face. Then she looked at her, without surprise, seriously as
though to