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. He rejoiced in the delightful intimacy the
circumstances made necessary. To hear snatches of joyous song and
gay laughter even from a distance, to watch her as she came in
and out on her daily tasks, to contest her opinions of books and
life and see how eagerly she defended them; he wondered himself
at the strength of the appeal these simple things made to him.
Already he was dreading the day when he must mount his horse and
ride back into the turbulent life from which she had for a time,
snatched him.

"I'll hate to go back to sheepherding," he told her one day at
lunch, looking at her across a snow-white tablecloth upon which
were a service of shining silver, fragile china teacups and
plates stamped Limoges.