And in her little room Em sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall through blinding tears.
"I wish I had it all to do over again," she said. "I'd do it all—even if I knew—for Ben!"
COLONEL BOB JARVIS.
I.
We were sojourning between Anaheim and the sea. There was a sunshiny dullness about the place, like the smiles of a vapid woman. The bit of vineyard surrounding our whitewashed cabin was an emerald set in the dull, golden-brown plain. Before the door an artesian well glittered in the sun like an inverted crystal bowl. Esculapius called the spot Fezzan, and gradually I came to think the well a fountain, and the sunburnt waste about us a stretch of yellow sand.
When I had walked to the field of whispering corn behind the house, and through the straggling vines to the edge of the vineyard in front, I came back to where my invalid sat beneath the feathery acacias, dreaming in happy lonesomeness.
"Did you ever see such placid, bright, ethereal stillness?" I asked.
Esculapius took his cigar from his lips and looked at me pensively.
"It may be my misfortune, I hope it is not my fault, but I do not remember to have seen stillness of any sort."