Memory as if they had a story to tell, as if something
intelligent had looked from the vacant windows as I stood
staring at them and had said, We have waited these many years
for you to come and listen to our story and you are come at
last.
Something perhaps stirred in me in response to that greeting
and message, but I failed to understand it, and after standing
there awhile, oppressed by a sense of loneliness, I turned
aside, and creeping and pushing through a mass and tangle of
vegetation went on my way towards the coast.
Possibly that idea or fancy of a story to tell, a human
tragedy, came to me only because of another singular
experience I had that day when the afternoon sun had grown
oppressively hot - another mystery of a desolate but not in
this case uninhabited house. The two places somehow became
associated together in my mind.
The place was a little farm-house standing some distance
from the road, in a lonely spot out of sight of any other
habitation, and I thought I would call and ask for a glass
of milk, thinking that if things had a promising look on my
arrival my modest glass of milk would perhaps expand to a
sumptuous five-o'clock tea and my short rest to a long and
pleasant one.
