"Tell me about it," she said.
"It is her natuah," insisted Seth almost fiercely, "and we can no mo' change ouah natuah, the instinct that is bawn in us, that is inherited, than we can change the place of ouah birth. Can we teach the fish to fly or the bird to swim, or the blind mole to live above the cool sof' earth in which centuries of ancestral moles have delighted to burrow? Then no mo' can you teach a woman in whom the love of country is pa'amount to love anothah country. Only by the gentlest measuahs may you wean her from it. Only by givin' her in this strange new country something mo' beautiful than any othah thing she has evah known. And that," he finished, "is why I am goin' to build the beautiful house."
He fell to dreaming audibly.
"All these were of costly stones, accordin' to the measuah of hewed stones, sawed with saws within and without," he muttered, "even from the foundation unto the copin', and so on the outside toward the great court."
Cyclona reaching up took down from a shelf a well-thumbed Book, which, since books are scarce on the desert, both knew by heart, and opened it at the Book of Kings.
"Seth," she said, presently, touching him on the shoulder, "aren't you getting this house mixed up with the House of the Lord?"
"No," smiled Seth, "with the house that Solomon built fo' Pharaoh's daughter whom he had taken to wife."
He went on softly:
"And the foundation was of cos'ly stones, even great stones, stones of ten cubits, and stones of eight cubits. And above were cos'ly stone, aftah the measuah of hewed stones, and cedars."
"Seth," said Cyclona, to whom no dream was too fanciful, "are you goin' to build this house just like that one?"