Now here were two. Their
fresh, simple faces on which an artless interest was so naively
displayed, their pleasant voices, not cultured as hers was but women's
voices for all that, gave her spirits a lift. Her depression quite
dropped away, the awful lonely feeling, all the more whelming because
nobody could understand it, departed from her. She ran back to the
camp singing and for the first time that day looked at David, whose
presence she had shunned, with her old, brilliant smile.
An hour later and the big camp rested, relaxed in the fading twilight
that lay a yellow thread of separation between the day's high colors
and the dewless darkness of the night. It was like a scene from the
migrations of the ancient peoples when man wandered with a woman, a
tent, and a herd. The barrier of the wagons, with its girdle of fire
sparks, incased a grassy oval green as a lawn. Here they sat in little
groups, collecting in tent openings as they were wont to collect on
summer nights at front gates and piazza steps. The crooning of women
putting babies to sleep fell in with the babblings of the river.
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