rhaps a wave of uneasiness, spreading from some unknown source, had
engulfed her.

Indeed, looking back over the two months I spent in the Benton house, I
am inclined to go even further. If thoughts carry, as I am sure they do,
then emotions carry. Fear, hope, courage, despair--if the intention of
writing a letter to an absent friend can spread itself half-way across
the earth, so that as you write the friend writes also, and your letters
cross, how much more should big emotions carry? I have had sweep over
me such waves of gladness, such gusts of despair, as have shaken me.
Yet with no cause for either. They are gone in a moment. Just for an
instant, I have caught and made my own another's joy or grief.

The only inexplicable part of this narrative is that Maggie, neither a
psychic nor a sensitive type, caught the terror, as I came to call it,
before I did. Perhaps it may be explainable by the fact that her mental
processes are comparatively simple, her mind an empty slate that shows
every mark made on it.

In a way, this is a study in fear.

Maggie's resentment continued through my decision to use the house,
through the packing, through the very moving itself. It took the form
of a sort of watchful waiting, although at the time we neither of
us realized it, and of dislike of the house and its surroundings. It
extended itself to the very garden, where she gathered flowers for the
table with a ruthlessness that was almost vicious. And, as July went
on, and Miss Emily made her occasional visits, as tiny, as delicate as
herself, I had a curious conclusion forced on me. Miss Emily returned
her antagonism. I was slow to credit it. What secret and even
unacknowledged opposition could there be between my downright Maggie and
this little old aristocrat with her frail hands and the soft rustle of
silk about her?

In Miss Emily, it took the form of--how strange a word to use in
connection with her!--of furtive watchfulness. I felt that Maggie's
entrance, with nothing more momentous than the tea-tray, set her upright
in her chair, put an edge to her soft voice, and absorbed her. She was
still attentive to what I said. She agreed or dissented. But back of it
all, with her eyes on me, she was watching Maggie.

With Maggie the antagonism took no such subtle form. It showed itself in
the second best instead of the best china, and a tendency to weak tea,
when Miss Emily took hers very strong. And such was the effect of their
mu