joyously.

"To make you well the sooner. I've just been telling Virginia what we'll
do for you even in a month. You'll be riding and climbing, and you'll
cry because you can't fell trees or rive out shakes, or something."

"I'm not worrying about that. It will come right very soon."

"We'll make it come right. No one ever dies a natural death there, you
know. I was just reading your sister a letter from Ben. Lee Jennings
killed breaking a horse, Elmer Watts shot by Chester Lynch. Of course,
in a way, that was a natural death for Elmer. He was bound to go that
way sooner or later, but you're not going to ride a bucker, and you're
not a gunfighter. Oh, you'll thrive, with a little stall feeding."

"And there's so much room out there." She smiled. "So much room to--to
live. And life is so full. I like to hear it, through Virgie and through
you. You are shells that give me the roar of it."

He was sensitive to some pathos of aloofness which her whole being
expressed for him, and he strove to meet this with pictures of herself
returning, a well woman; but she turned her face from him at length, and
did not speak for so long that he thought she might be sleeping. He went
carefully out, with a last enveloping look.

When he had gone the woman laughed in a helpless, shuddering way, then
raised herself far enough toward the window to see the fields rushing by
outside. There was timidity in her look until she had seen a mile of
that relentless earth rush back and away from her. She seemed to need
this assurance that she was going away from the trouble in the crude,
literal sense of earthly distance--going off where there was room "to
live," she had told Ewing; "to die," she had amended the phrase to
herself. For death was now a solace she faced. She who had been so hot
for the fight, so avid of life, had been cheated of a combatant's
privileges. She could not tell Ewing the truth, and she could not live
while he believed the lie. It was well, she thought, to know that she
had only to let herself float down that placid current of the white
death. She was amazed at her own calmness and tested it in all subtle
ways, making sure of its foundations. She could find no weak spot. She
craved only a moderate speed in the descent. Too long a wait would be
wearisome, and the wise man had assured her against that. Yet she felt
that she had the right to be a little glad when her brother told her the
next day of a change in the plan.