And the mill stream
tunneling under the road and the wall ran swiftly between green banks
through the garden and the orchard, singing as it ran. There lingered,
she thought, an ancient grace about this old garden, some flavor of
forgotten days, as in a room scented with potpourri; and she walked the
lawn in a great contentment.
The house within charmed her no less. It was a place of many corners and
quaint nooks, and of a flooring so unlevel that she could hardly pass
from one room to another without taking a step up or a step down. Sylvia
went about the house quietly and with a certain thoughtfulness. Here she
had been born and a mystery of her life was becoming clear to her. On
this summer evening the windows were set wide in every room, and thus in
every room, as she passed up and down, she heard the liquid music of
running water, here faint, like a whispered melody, there pleasant, like
laughter, but nowhere very loud, and everywhere quite audible. In one of
these rooms she had been born. In one of these rooms her mother had slept
at nights during the weeks before she was born, with that music in her
ears at the moment of sleep and at the moment of her waking. Sylvia
understood now why she had always dreamed of running water. She wondered
in which room she had been born. She tried to remember some corner of the
house, some nook in its high-walled garden; and that she could not awoke
in her a strange and almost eery feeling.
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