`` Oh yes , very often . All the time I am saying the words in my head , just as I hear other people saying them , but I never can make my tongue say them . Do not look so sorry , my friend . I am very happy and I do not mind so very much not being able to speak -- only sometimes when I have so many thoughts and it seems so slow to write them out , some of them get away from me . I must play to you again . You look too sober . '' She laughed again , picked up her violin , and played a tinkling , roguish little melody as if she were trying to tease him , looking at Eric over her violin with luminous eyes that dared him to be merry . Eric smiled ; but the puzzled look returned to his face many times that evening . He walked home in a brown study . Kilmeny 's case certainly seemed a strange one , and the more he thought of it the stranger it seemed . `` It strikes me as something very peculiar that she should be able to make sounds only when she is not thinking about it , '' he reflected . `` I wish David Baker could examine her . But I suppose that is out of the question . That grim pair who have charge of her would never consent . '' CHAPTER IX . THE STRAIGHT SIMPLICITY OF EVE For the next three weeks Eric Marshall seemed to himself to be living two lives , as distinct from each other as if he possessed a double personality . In one , he taught the Lindsay district school diligently and painstakingly ; solved problems ; argued on theology with Robert Williamson ; called at the homes of his pupils and took tea in state with their parents ; went to a rustic dance or two and played havoc , all unwittingly , with the hearts of the Lindsay maidens . But this life was a dream of workaday . He only LIVED in the other , which was spent in an old orchard , grassy and overgrown , where the minutes seemed to lag for sheer love of the spot and the June winds made wild harping in the old spruces . Here every evening he met Kilmeny ; in that old orchard they garnered hours of quiet happiness together ; together they went wandering in the fair fields of old romance ; together they read many books and talked of many things ; and , when they were tired of all else , Kilmeny played to him and the old orchard echoed with her lovely , fantastic melodies .
At every meeting her beauty came home afresh XXXXX him with the old thrill of glad surprise .
about as evening from in minutes of that to with