She moved as though to go back to her dogs, but the woman's
hand went out in a familiar gesture,--twin to Frona's own,--which went
at once to Frona's heart.
"Stay a moment," she said, with an undertone of pleading in the words,
"and talk with me. It is long since I have met a woman"--she paused
while her tongue wandered for the word--"who could quote 'Paracelsus.'
You are,--I know you, you see,--you are Jacob Welse's daughter, Frona
Welse, I believe."
Frona nodded her identity, hesitated, and looked at the woman with
secret intentness. She was conscious of a great and pardonable
curiosity, of a frank out-reaching for fuller knowledge. This
creature, so like, so different; old as the oldest race, and young as
the last rose-tinted babe; flung far as the farthermost fires of men,
and eternal as humanity itself--where were they unlike, this woman and
she? Her five senses told her not; by every law of life they were no;
only, only by the fast-drawn lines of social caste and social wisdom
were they not the same. So she thought, even as for one searching
moment she studied the other's face. And in the situation she found an
uplifting awfulness, such as comes when the veil is thrust aside and
one gazes on the mysteriousness of Deity. She remembered: "Her feet
take hold of hell; her house is the way to the grave, going down to the
chamber of death," and in the same instant strong upon her was the
vision of the familiar gesture with which the woman's hand had gone out
in mute appeal, and she looked aside, out over the dreary endless
white, and for her, too, the day became filled with sadness.
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