"I had a year of it," Bella resumed, "and, do you know, things were
beginning to come right. I was beginning to draw to Husband
George. Women are so made, I was such a woman at any rate. For he
was good. He was just. All the old sterling Puritan virtues were
his. I was coming to draw to him, to like him, almost, might I
say, to love him. And had not Uncle John loaned me that horse, I
know that I would have truly loved him and have lived ever happily
with him--in a quiet sort of way, of course.
"You see, I knew nothing else, nothing different, nothing better in
the way of men. I came gladly to look across the table at him
while he read in the brief interval between supper and bed, gladly
to listen for and to catch the beat of his horse's hoofs coming
home at night from his endless riding over the ranch. And his
scant praise was praise indeed, that made me tingle with happiness-
-yes, Sister Martha, I knew what it was to blush under his precise,
just praise for the things I had done right or correctly.
"And all would have been well for the rest of our lives together,
except that he had to take steamer to Honolulu.
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