re those who believed that and it was
comforting. "She is laik the flowahs, that beautiful one. She knows
bettah than to bloom in this God-fo'saken country--that was what she
called it--wheah you cain't get the flowahs to bloom because of the
wind that is fo'evah blowin'. She lives now wheah the flowahs bloom
and the wind nevah blows."

Cyclona lifted her head to listen to the moan and the sough of the
wind.

"I love it," she said.

"So do I," said Seth, "though sometimes I am half afraid of it,
thinkin' it is getting into my brain, but she hated it. But nevah
mind. When we grow tall trees that will break the force of the wind
and shade her from the sun and build the beautiful house fo' her, she
will come back home and live in it with us and we shall be happy!
Happy! We shall fo'get all ouah sorrow, we shall be so happy!"

At that moment, the moment of the going down of the sun, the wind
dropped and the passing clouds let in the gleam of the sunset at the
window. It rested goldenly on Seth's face. It illumined it. It
glorified it.

Cyclona looked at him long and earnestly, at the strong, fine lines of
sadness brought beautifully out by this unexpected high-light of the
skies, accentuated Rembrandt-like, against the darkness of the
earth-colored hole in the ground.

Then she bent her sunburnt head and a tear fell on her hand
outstretched upon the table.

At sight of the tear Seth was like a man who is all at once drunk with
new wine. There is truth in the wine. There are times when it clears
the brain for the moment and reveals things as they are.

He looked at Cyclona with new eyes. It was as if he had never before
seen her. She differed from Celia as the wild rose differs from the
rose that blooms in hothouses, and yet how beautiful she was! He
realized for the first time her wonderful beauty. So olive of
complexion with the delicate tinge of rose showing through, so bronze
of hair in close-cut sun-kissed curls!

The little curls that gave her a boyish look in spite of the fact that
she had blossomed into radiant womanhood. The big brown eyes. The
curve of the neck, the little tip-tilted chin!

Seth had been hardly human if the thought of forgetting Celia and her
indifference in Cyclona's arms had not more than once presented
itself.

It presented itself now with the strength of strong winds.

Without home or kindred, without tie or connection, she was a flower
in his pathway. He had only to reach out