“That’s what happy-hearted people always say,” said Edward. “Happiness and sadness are not attributes and not moods. They are the foundations on which people are built. You can’t change your foundations.”
“Well, if you are sad, your castle is built on sand. It is so safe to be well and truly laid on a happy and a rocky heart. Then even pain is nothing more than storms beating on the rock. When the storm goes down you are wet and perhaps a shade chipped but still safe.”
“I am never safe,” said Edward. “Never safe for a second.”
“Oh, I am so tired of talking about you and me, Edward dear,” said Emily sitting up.
They were silent and Edward felt as if he were learning Emily’s face by heart and as if it were a lesson knowledge of which would be most urgently required of him some day. Her upper lip was thinner than the lower and, though the upper lip did not protrude beyond the lower at all, the effect of a little uptilted pout was produced by the line below her mouth which receded very definitely before jutting out to form a rather large round chin. Her nose was strong and rather broad, absolutely straight in profile and a little tilted. Tilted lines were necessary in her face to support her slanting thick black brows and the upward angle of her dark hair. She was smaller than most people and looked as if she were accustomed to putting her shoulders back and looking half defiantly up into the eyes of large, strong, delighted men.
There were no level places in the land they were passing through and no color except a hot brown. The air shook in the heat; the summits of the brown dead hills seemed to be seen through shaken water. There were scars in the hills made by old gold-seekers here and there, and surviving one-man mines stabbed the slopes. Small villages of bleak grey shacks clung to the road. The sunset turned the brown to red; the air in the shadow of the hills was russet red. It was time to find a camp site. Whenever they turned a corner and looked down, as it seemed, upon a perfect site, some little town had chosen that site too. There was no remoteness in that strange broad land.
“This damned country has broken out into a rash of towns,” complained Tam.
One of the intrusive little towns seemed to attract the sunset. Its windows flamed in orange; its roofs smouldered in dull crimson.
“It’s like as if it was on fire,” said Lucy. “Stop, Tam, and let me look.” Lucy always had to look where the others only glanced.
“Lot’s wife,” said Tam.