She touched my fingers lightly with a chilly little hand, yet she never looked at me as she replied, “Yes, some day.”

As I plodded heavily through the wet sand, I was irresistibly impelled to turn my head.  She was merely standing exactly as I left her, thin and straight, in the black gown that clung closely to her slender limbs, with the mass of light hair about her shoulders.

Drenched as I was, when I reached home, with the large warm drops of the storm’s beginning, I stopped in the sitting-room a moment before going to my room.  The smell of ironing scented the house, but Mrs. Libby was resting placidly in the rocking-chair, her feet on a cushioned stool.  She was eating some peaches, tearing them apart from the stone with strong, juice-dropping fingers, and dipping them in a saucer of coarse sugar before she devoured them.

“Mrs. Libby, who is Agnes Rayne?” I asked.

“She is old Martin Rayne’s daughter, up to the corner.  Seen her down to the beach, I expect.  Speak to you?  Did?  Well, she’s as queer as Dick’s hat-band, as folks say ’round here.  Some say she’s crazy—­love-cracked, I guess she is.”  Mrs. Libby paused to kill a fly that ventured too near her saucer on the table at her side, with a quick blow of the fleshy hand.  I used to turn away when Mrs. Libby killed flies.  “Oh! I d’know!  She’s just queer.  Don’t commess with anybody, nor ever go to meetin’.  The minister called there once; he ain’t ever been again, nor told how he was treated, that’s sure.  They live queer, too.  She don’t ever make pies, ner p’serves, ner any kind of sauce.  ‘N’ old Martin, he’s childish now.  He always was as close-mouthed as a mussel.  Nobody ever knew whether he liked such goin’s on or not.”

I went up the high, narrow stairs, thoughtfully to my small room under the eaves, dark with the storm, and smelling of must and dampness.  I smiled a little.  It was more than probable that these people would count slight eccentricity in a lady—­and this was undoubtedly a lady, whatever her birth and surroundings—­as madness.  After dinner I stood by the window a long time.  Through the network of apple-boughs, I could see the road.  Mrs. Libby, coming heavily into the sitting-room, divined my thoughts.

“If you’re wondering how Agnes gets home, she goes cross-lots, right through the scrub-oak ‘n’ poison ivy ’n black-b’ries, ’f she’s in a hurry.  She ain’t afraid o’ rain; like’s not, she stays down to the shore the whole ‘durin’ day.”

“I suppose the people here talk about her.”

“Most of ’em have too much to do to talk,” replied Mrs. Libby, smoothing down her shining bands of hair before the hanging glass, and regarding her reflected large, white face and set smile, with dull satisfaction and vanity.  “They’re used to her now.”

One glaring afternoon within the week, I sat out on the tiny porch, idly watching a fat spider throw his ropes from the box-bush to the step.  I had been sitting there for three hours, and only one creaking farm-wagon had passed, and two dirty brown-legged children.  The air was breathless and spicy, and in the rough clearing opposite, the leaves seemed to curve visibly in the intense heat.  Did anything ever happen here?  It seemed to me as much out of the range of possible happenings as the grave.