The pioneer : $b A tale of two statesBonner, Geraldine
General
The pioneer : $b A tale of two states
Bonner, Geraldine
California -- Fiction; Nevada -- Fiction; Western stories
Against the background of variegated greens she presented a harmony of
clear, thin tints like a water color. Her dress of sheer, white muslin
was cut away from the throat in a point, and smoothly covering her arms
and neck, let them be seen beneath its crisp transparency, warmly white
under the cold white of the material. The heat of the afternoon and the
excitement of the meeting had called up a faint pink to her cheeks. In
her belt she had thrust a branch of wistaria and the trail of blossoms
hung down along her skirt. She wore a wide leghorn hat, and in this
she had fastened another bunch, the flowers lying scattered across the
broad rim, and one spray hanging over its edge and mingling with the
curls that touched her neck.
Jerry had never seen her look as she did this afternoon. Love, that she
felt assured was returned, had lent her the fleeting beauty of an hour.
She did not seek to penetrate the future. The happiness of the present
sufficed her. She said little, plucking at a tuft of small wild flowers
that grew beside her, conscious to her inmost fiber of her lover’s eyes.
“Why don’t you take off your hat?” he said. “There’s no sun here.”
She obediently took it off and threw it on the ground. The black
velvet she wore around her head had become disarranged and she raised
her hands to draw it into place and tuck a loosened curl under its
restraint. He watched her fixedly.
“Now,” he said, reaching out to draw the hat to him and taking one of
the wistaria blossoms from it, “put this in.”
“I have no glass,” she demurred, stretching a hand for the flower.
“That doesn’t matter. I’ll be your glass. I’ll tell you if it isn’t all
right.”
She tucked the stem of the blossom into the velvet band, so that its
trail of delicate lavender bells fell downward behind her ear.
“How is that?” she said, facing him, her eyes downcast. Her coquetries
of manner had deserted her. With the flush on her face a glowing pink
and her lashes on her cheeks, she was a picture of uneasy embarrassment.
“Perfect,” he answered. He continued to stare at her for a moment and
then said suddenly in a low voice,
“Good heavens, how you’ve changed! It’s a little over a year now that
I’ve known you and you’re an entirely different person from the girl
with the short hair I met up at Foleys. What have you done to yourself?
What is it that has changed you?”
“I think it’s because I’m happy,” she said, beginning again to pick the
wild flowers.
“Why are you happy?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I--” she paused and began to arrange
her flowers in a careful bunch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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