h was well up. There was no cloud in the sky. Far off to the east
and west, the bulwarks of the valley, the Coast Range and the foothills
of the Sierras stood out, pale amethyst against the delicate pink and
white sheen of the horizon. The sunlight was a veritable flood, crystal,
limpid, sparkling, setting a feeling of gayety in the air, stirring up
an effervescence in the blood, a tumult of exuberance in the veins.

But on his way to the barns, Annixter was obliged to pass by the open
door of the dairy-house. Hilma Tree was inside, singing at her work;
her voice of a velvety huskiness, more of the chest than of the throat,
mingling with the liquid dashing of the milk in the vats and churns, and
the clear, sonorous clinking of the cans and pans. Annixter turned into
the dairy-house, pausing on the threshold, looking about him. Hilma
stood bathed from head to foot in the torrent of sunlight that poured in
upon her from the three wide-open windows. She was charming, delicious,
radiant of youth, of health, of well-being. Into her eyes, wide open,
brown, rimmed with their fine, thin line of intense black lashes, the
sun set a diamond flash; the same golden light glowed all around her
thick, moist hair, lambent, beautiful, a sheen of almost metallic
lustre, and reflected itself upon her wet lips, moving with the words
of her singing. The whiteness of her skin under the caress of this hale,
vigorous morning light was dazzling, pure, of a fineness beyond words.
Beneath the sweet modulation of her chin, the reflected light from the
burnished copper vessel she was carrying set a vibration of pale gold.
Overlaying the flush of rose in her cheeks, seen only when she stood
against the sunlight, was a faint sheen of down, a lustrous floss,
delicate as the pollen of a flower, or the impalpable powder of a moth's
wing. She was moving to and fro about her work, alert, joyous, robust;
and from all the fine, full amplitude of her figure, from her thick
white neck, sloping downward to her shoulders, from the deep, feminine
swell of her breast, the vigorous maturity of her hips, there was
disengaged a vibrant note of gayety, of exuberant animal life, sane,
honest, strong. She wore a skirt of plain blue calico and a shirtwaist
of pink linen, clean, trim; while her sleeves turned back to her
shoulders, showed her large, white arms, wet with milk, redolent and
fragrant with milk, glowing and resplendent in the early morning light.

On the thr