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.

"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?"

"If I could, I would," Seth made reply, and then went on dreaming his
dream aloud. "And he made the pillahs