his life; (she put them over the mantel-shelf, where he could rejoice
his soul over them every time he brought wood to the fire;) last fall
she had hung wreaths of forest-leaves about them, and now they glowed
and flashed back the snow-light, in indignant life, purple and scarlet
and flame, with no thought of dying; the very water in the vases on the
table turned into the silver roots of hyacinths that made the common air
poetic with perfume; the rough wire-baskets filled with mould, which she
hung in the windows, grew living, and welled up, and ran over into
showers of moss, and trailing wreaths of ivy and cypress-vine, and a
brood of the merest flakes of roses, which held the hot crimson of so
many summers gone that they could laugh in the teeth of the winter
outside, and did do it, until it seemed like a perfect sham and a jest.

The wood-fire was clear, just now, when Dode came in; the little room
was fairly alive, palpitated crimson; in the dark corners, under the
tables and chairs, the shadows tried not to be black, and glowed into a
soft maroon; even the pale walls flushed, cordial and friendly. Dode was
glad of it; she hated dead, ungrateful colors: grays and browns belonged
to thin, stingy duty-lives, to people who are patient under life, as a
perpetual imposition, and, as Bone says, "gets into heben by the skin o'
their teeth." Dode's color was dark blue: you know that means in an
earthly life stern truth, and a tenderness as true: she wore it
to-night, as she generally did, to tell God she was alive, and thanked
Him for being alive. Surely the girl was made for to-day; she never
missed the work or joy of a moment here in dreaming of a yet ungiven
life, as sham, lazy women do. You would think that, if you had seen her
standing there in the still light, motionless, yet with latent life in
every limb. There was not a dead atom in her body: something within,
awake, immortal, waited, eager to speak every moment in the coming color
on her cheek, the quiver of her lip, the flashing words or languor of