ecstasy. The settled
lines of his face were almost sullen in their intensity. The sparkle
died from Amy's eyes and a look of anxious questioning took its place.
With the strange unconscious conceit confined to narrow minds, she never
dreamed that her husband's preoccupation was a thing entirely apart from
herself. Wholly self-centred, her husband's smiling attention meant
approbation; preoccupation meant disapproval or resentment. Her sun was
her husband's love. In its full warm rays she basked with the happy
abandon of a well-fed animal. Preoccupation was the eclipsing shadow
that chilled her to the marrow, with no sustaining faith that it was
only obscuration, not destruction for all time. When the shadow fell,
there was no other suggestion than to beat her sounding soul with a
heathen's ardor, in order to frighten from its prey the devouring dragon
that would forever destroy her source of life and light. Now her anxiety
grew to pain; her lips were tremulous.

"What have I done to offend you, Elijah?"

"Nothing," he answered abruptly. "I'm not offended. Can't you see that
I'm absorbed in my work? I can't spend all my time in telling you that I
love you just the same as ever. Why can't you take something for
granted?"

Elijah's words were sharp-cut, almost explosive. It was not resentment
at Amy; it was the irritation of a dog who is having a bone taken from
his jaws.

Amy was cut to the depths of her sensitive soul. Her words were not a
reproach, but a hopeless wail.

"It's these miserable orange trees! I wish oranges had never grown in
this country. I was so happy before. Now you never think of me. You look
at the mountains and the springs and the orange trees, but never at me."
Her tears were flowing freely, her lips were tremulous.

Elijah was moved, but without understanding.

"Why! Haven't I always enjoyed showing them to you and talking to you
about them? You know that I always tell you every thing that I am
doing."

"Yes, I know; but you get just as enthusiastic over them to Ralph
Winston and he looks cold all the time and keeps criticising and
contradicting you. It's just the same with the other men who come to
look at your work. They don't care one single thing about you, and I do,
and I tell you so, but you won't believe me."

Amy's tears had ceased, her voice was steadier; but there was a
suggestion of the eager heart hunger that looked from her eyes.

"Winston isn't my wife, Amy--"

"And he