There was always,
too, the turquoise sky, out of which poured a flood of light on
the roll of hilltops. Sometimes he read to himself, but he was
still easily tired, and preferred usually to rest. More often she
read aloud to him while he lay back with his leveled eyes gravely
on her till the gentle, cool abstraction she affected was
disturbed and her perplexed lashes rose to reproach the intensity
of his gaze.
She was of those women who have the heavenborn faculty of making
home of such fortuitous elements as are to their hands. Except
her piano and such knickknacks as she had brought in a single
trunk she had had to depend upon the resources of the
establishment to which she had come, but it is wonderful how much
can be done with some Navajo rugs, a bearskin, a few bits of
Indian pottery and woven baskets and a judicious arrangement of
scenic photographs. In a few days she would have her pictures
from Kalamazoo, pending which her touch had transformed the big
living room from a cheerless barn into a spot that was a comfort
to the eye and heart. To the wounded man who lay there slowly
renewing the blood he had lost the room was the apotheosis of
home, less, perhaps, by reason of what it was in itself than
because it was the setting for her presence--for her grave,
sympathetic eyes, the sound of her clear voice, the light grace
of her motion.
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