Boswell's apartment, high
above the street and overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades, became a
veritable sanctuary from which she dreaded to emerge and to which she
clung in a passion of self-preservation. The gray wall of stone across
the sparkling stream grew to be, in her vivid fancy, the barrier between
the past and future. Against it, unseen, faint, but persistent, beat what
once had been--her grim father, her weak, tearful mother, lonely, kindly
Master Farwell, and all the lesser folk of Kenmore. Pressing close and
straining to hold her, these dim, shadowy memories clustered, but she no
longer appeared a part of them, like them, or in any way connected with
them. On the other hand, below the eyrie dwelling in which she was
temporarily sheltered, lay the whirlpool of sound and motion into which,
sooner or later, she must plunge.
With keen appreciation and understanding of this phase of her
development, John Boswell kept conversation and life upon the surface,
and rarely permitted a letting-down of thought. Cautiously, and not too
often, he took his guest on tours of inspection and watched her while she
underwent new ordeals or experienced pain from unknown thrills.
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