She loitered about under the spread of the pine
boughs, cleaning and tidying up, and patching the ragged remnants of
their clothes. Often, as she sat propped against the trunk, her sewing
fell to her lap and she looked out with shining, spell-bound eyes. The
men were shapes of dark importance against the glancing veil of water,
the soaked sands and the low brushwood yellowing in the autumn's soft,
transforming breath. Far away the film of whitened summits dreamed
against the blue. In the midwash of air, aloft and dreaming, too, the
hawk's winged form poised, its shadow moving below it across the sea of
tree tops.
She would sit thus, motionless and idle, as the long afternoon wore
away, and deep-colored veils of twilight gathered in the canon. She
told the men the continuous sounds of their toil made her drowsy. But
her stillness was the outward sign of an inner concentration. If
delight in rest had replaced her old bodily energy, her mind had gained
a new activity. She wondered a little at it, not yet at the heart of
her own mystery. Her thoughts reached forward into the future, busied
themselves with details of the next twelve months, dwelt anxiously on
questions of finance.
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