Somehow, too, those large and
beautiful eyes had appeared to grow smaller with the passing of the
years, not with tears, for there are tears that wash out all else but
beauty in some women's eyes, but with the barren drought of feeling
which goes to sap the very fount of loveliness.

And it was this barren drought of feeling which at last served to
disillusion him, whose existence he at last realized in this creature
who had been his cherished idol. He realized it in her apathy upon
hearing of the death of the child. He realized it in the look she
turned upon him in which he saw her stern suspicion that he had come
homeless to her in the hope of a home.

Formerly, in the days of her mother and her old black Mammy, they had
taken tea in the dining-room, which had looked out on a green sward
brightened by flowers.

Gay and cheerful teas these were, enlivened by guests.

In the absence of guests, Celia had fallen into the slack habit of
eating in the kitchen of the smoke-begrimed ceiling and the dark bare
walls. There was a small deal table against the window. It was covered
with an abbreviated cloth.

Celia walked about setting this table for Seth and herself, laying
with palpable reluctance the extra plate, cup, saucer, knife and fork.
Her movements were no longer girlish. They were heavy and slow.

When tea was ready she bade Seth draw up his chair. They then ate
their supper, Seth too tired to talk and Celia busy with the problem
of this added mouth destined to consume the contents of her scant
larder.

When supper was over Seth left her to clear the table, went out in the
dark on the front porch away from the cold steel blue of her eye and
sat down on the step.

Men seldom shed tears, or he would have found it in his heart to
weep.

CHAPTER XXV.

[Illustration]

Not many moons after the wreck wrought by the withering winds, which,
while they had not touched the place of the forks of the two rivers,
lacked little of it, the Wise Men came out of the East and found
Cyclona alone in the Kansas dugout there by the Big Arkansas and the
Little Arkansas.

"Is this the place where the Indians pitched their tents?" they asked,
"because no cyclones come here?"

"Yes," she answered.

"Then this," said they, "is where we will build our city."

"The Magic City," repeated Cyclona, without surprise.

"When we have finished it," they smiled, "it will be a Magic City."

Cyclona looked wistfully out along