"But it wasn't, of course, about his story that I wanted to tell you.
It was about the 'home,' as he called it, that his broken hand made
for my--frightened one. I don't know how to express it; I can't
exactly think, even, of any words to explain it. Why, I've been all
over the world, I tell you, and fairly loafed and lolled in every
conceivable sort of ease and luxury, but the Soul of me--the wild,
restless, breathless, discontented _soul_ of me--_never sat down
before in all its life_--I say, until my frightened hand cuddled into
his broken one. I tell you I don't pretend to explain it, I don't
pretend to account for it; all I know is--that smothering there under
all that horrible wreckage and everything--the instant my hand went
home to his, the most absolute sense of serenity and contentment went
over me. Did you ever see young white horses straying through a
white-birch wood in the springtime? Well, it felt the way that
_looks_!--Did you ever hear an alto voice singing in the candle-light?
Well, it felt the way that _sounds_! The last vision you would like to
glut your eyes on before blindness smote you! The last sound you would
like to glut your ears on before deafness dulled you! The last
touch--before Intangibility! Something final, complete,
supreme--ineffably satisfying!

"And then people came along and rescued us, and I was sick in the
hospital for several weeks. And then after that I went to Persia. I
know it sounds silly, but it seemed to me as though just the smell of
Persia would be able to drive away even the memory of red plush dust
and scorching woodwork. And there was a man on the steamer whom I used
to know at home--a man who's almost always wanted to marry me. And
there was a man who joined our party at Teheran--who liked me a
little. And the land was like silk and silver and attar of roses. But