Her lips quivered again.  Looking up into her face, Blake wondered for an instant at the sudden softness of her eyes.  Then he realized that they were slowly filling with tears.  He reached again to seize her hands.

“Oh, no, no—­wait!” she said, weakly.  After a pause, she resumed: 

“That got up rebellion in me.  All children have such periods, I’ve heard.  I’m docile enough now.  But before I was through with this one, Aunt Paula had to make my destiny clear to me—­long before she meant to do so.  And I grew to be resigned, and then glad, because it was a greater thing.”

Here a rapid, inexplicable change crossed her face.  From its firmness of health and strength, it fell toward the look of one “called”—­

“I must go back again.  Between Aunt Paula and me there was always a great sympathy.  It’s hard to describe.  Often we do not have to speak even of the most important things.  When I come to know more about other people, I wondered at first why they needed to do so much talking.  Things have happened—­things that I would not expect you to believe—­”

She had kindled now, and she looked into his eyes like some sybil, divinely unconscious, preaching the unbelievable.

“I knew dimly, as a child knows, and accepts, that Aunt Paula had some wonderful mission and that it had to do with the other world—­all you’re taught when they teach you to say your prayers.  Little by little she made me understand.  I grew up before I understood fully.  The Guides—­Aunt Paula’s—­I have none as yet—­had told her that I was a Light.”

He caught at this word, for his lover’s impatience was burning and beating within him.

“Light!” he said; “my Light!”

She regarded him gravely, and then, as though his fervor had frightened her, she looked beyond at the apple leaves.

“Don’t—­you’ll know soon why you mustn’t.  Oh, help me, for I am unhappy!” She controlled a little upward ripple of her throat.  “She, the Guides say, is a great Light, but I am to be a greater.  They sent her to find me, and they directed her to keep me as she has—­away from the world.  When she first told me that, I was terrified.  She had to sit beside me and hold my hand until I went to sleep.  It’s wonderful how quickly I do sleep when Aunt Paula’s with me—­she’s the most soothing person in the world.  If it weren’t for her, I don’t know what I’d do when I get into my tired times.”

“You’re never going to have any more tired times, Light,” he said.

She went on inflexibly, but he knew that she had heard: 

“There was one thing which I did not understand, and neither perhaps did Aunt Paula.  The Guides sometimes seem foolish, but in the end they’re always wise; I suppose they waited until the time should come.  Though I tried to help it along, though I cried with impatience, I couldn’t begin to get voices.  I’ve sat in dark rooms for hours, as Aunt Paula wished me to do.  I’ve felt many true things, but I could never say honestly that I heard anything.  But the Guides told Aunt Paula ‘wait.’  And at last she learned what was the matter.