I feel choked and
stifled where there are walls shutting out the air and streets full of
people. Even in the Fort I felt like a trapped animal. I want to be
where there's room to move about and nobody bothering with different
kinds of ideas. It's only in the open, in places without men, that I'm
myself."
For the first time he had dared to give expression to the mood of the
wakeful night. Though it was dim in the busy brightness of the
present--a black spot on the luster of cheerful days--he dreaded that
it might come again with its scaring suggestions. With a nerve that
had never known a tremor at any menace from man, he was frightened of a
thought, a temporary mental state. In speaking thus to her, he
recognized her as a help-meet to whom he could make a shamed admission
of weakness and fear no condemnation or diminution of love. This time,
however, she made the wrong reply:
"But we'll go down to the coast after a while, if our claim's good and
we get enough dust out of it. I think of it often. It will be so nice
to live in a house again, and have some one to do the cooking, and wear
pretty clothes.
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