Full well Cyclona knew the story of the Magic City, having heard it again and again, but it was only of late when Seth had given up all hope of Celia's returning to the dugout that he commenced to plan the beautiful house.
"When the Wise Men come out of the East," Seth told her, "and buy up ouah land fo' the Magic City, we shall be rich. It is then that I shall build this beautiful house, so beautiful that she must come and live in it with us."
Cyclona leaned over the table on her elbows, looking at the plan. Her dark eyes were sad, for she knew that by "us," Seth meant Charlie and himself.
He ran his pencil over the plan, showing how the beautiful house was to be built. Somewhat after the fashion of a Southern house modernized. A Southern woman, he explained, must live in a house which would remind her of her home and still be so beautiful that not for one instant would she regret that home or the land of her birth which she had left for it.
"A species of insanity it is," he muttered, "to bring such a woman to a hole in the ground." He bit his lip and frowned, "fo' theah ah women in whom the love of home, of country, is pa'amount. Above all human things, above husband, above children, she loves her home. Child! Celia has no child. Cyclona, has no one written to Celia that she has no child?"
This wildly, his eyes insanely bright.
"It is just as well," soothed Cyclona. "It doesn't matter. She never knew him."
It seemed to Cyclona that she could see the lonely resting place of the child reflected in Seth's eyes, so firmly was his mind fixed upon it.
"You ah right, Cyclona," he said by and by. "You ah right. It is just as well. It might grieve her, altho' it is as you say, she nevah knew him."
Cyclona traced a line of the plan of the beautiful house.