He flinched at her ironical tone, and she asked, somewhat more gently,
"It's a theory, Robin, but it wouldn't explain, then, why _you_ see
them."
"Maybe I'm--more used to this light," he said gropingly. "--And anyway,
you said you thought you'd seen them and thought it was only a dream."
Halfway between exasperation and a deep pity, Helen found herself
arguing, "If these other people of yours really exist, why haven't they
made themselves known in sixteen years?"
The eagerness with which he answered was almost frightening. "I think
they only come out at night, they're what your book calls a primitive
civilization--" He spoke the words he had read, but never heard, with
an odd hesitation. "They're not really a civilization at all, I think,
they're like--part of the woods."
"A forest people," Helen mused, impressed in spite of herself, "and
nocturnal. It's always moonlight or dusky when you see them--"
"Then you _do_ believe me--oh, Helen," Robin cried, and suddenly found
himself pouring out the story of what he had seen, in incoherent
words, concluding "--and by daylight I can hear them, but I can't see
them--Helen, Helen, you have to believe it now, you'll have to let me
try to find them and learn to talk to them--"
Helen listened with a sinking heart. She knew they should not discuss
it now, when five days of enforced housebound proximity had set their
nerves and tempers on edge, but some unknown tension hurled her sharp
words at Robin. "You saw a woman, and I--a man. These things are only
dreams. Do I have to explain more to you?"