The sun dropped below the piazza roof and pierced the bamboo lattices with
lines and slits of fervid light.

"From heat to heat the day declined."

The gardener came with wet sacking and swathed the black-glazed
jardinieres, in which the earth was steaming. The mine whistle blared, and
a rattle of miners' carts followed, as the day-shift dispersed to town. The
mine did not board its proletariate. At his usual hour the watchman braved
the blinding path, and left the evening paper on the piazza floor. There it
lay unopened. Mrs. Thorne fanned herself and looked at it. There must be
fighting in Cuba; she did not move to see. Other mothers' sons were dying;
what was death to such squalor as hers? Sorrow is a queen, as the poet
says, and sits enthroned; but Trouble is a slave. Mothers with griefs like
hers must suffer in the fetters of silence.

When dinner was over, Ito made his nightly pilgrimage through the house,
opening bedroom shutters, fastening curtains back. He drew up the
piazza-blinds, and like a stage-scene, framed in post and balustrade, and
bordered with a tracery of rose-vines, the valley burst upon the view.
Its cool twilight colors, its river-bed of mist, added to the depth of
distance. Against it the white roses looked whiter, and the pink ones
caught fire from the intense, great afterglow.

The silent couple, drinking their coffee outside, drew a long mutual sigh.

"Every day," said Mrs. Thorne, "we wonder why we stay in such a place, and
every evening we are cajoled into thinking there never can be such
another day. And the beauty is just as fresh every night as the heat is