In the
long hours on horseback she went over them like a lesson she was trying
to learn. She reviewed David's good points, dwelt on them, held them up
for her admiration, and told herself no girl had ever had a finer or more
gallant lover. She was convinced of it and was quite ready to convince
anybody who denied it. Only when her mental vision--pressed on by some
inward urge of obscure self-distrust--carried her forward to that future
with David in the cabin in California, something in her shrank and
failed. Her thought leaped back as from an abhorrent contact, and her
body, caught by some mysterious internal qualm, felt limp and faintly
sickened.
She dwelt even more persistently on Courant's hatefulness, impressed upon
herself his faults. He was hard and she had seen him brutal, a man
without feeling, as he had shown when the Mormon boy died, a harsh and
remorseless leader urging them on, grudging them even their seventh day
rest, deaf to their protests, lashing them forward with contempt of their
weakness. This was above and apart from his manner to her. That she
tried to feel was a small, personal matter, but, nevertheless, it stung,
did not cease to sting, and left an unhealed sore to rankle in her pride.
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