Looking at the huge bed and the rancher-farmer's coarse
clothes hanging on pegs, the big greased boots against the wall, a sudden
savage feeling of disgust and anger took hold of him; but the spirit of
healing at once emerged, and he concentrated himself upon the duty before
him.
For a whole hour he worked with her, and at length subdued the
convulsions of pain which distorted the beautiful face and made the
childlike body writhe. He had a resentment against the crime which had
been committed. Marriage had not made her into a woman; it had driven her
back into an arrested youth. It was as though she ought to have worn
short skirts and her hair in a long braid down her back. Hers was the
body of a young boy. When she was free from pain, and the colour had come
back to her cheeks a little, she smiled at him, and was about to put out
her hand as a child might to a brother or a father, when suddenly a
shadow stole into her eyes and crept across her face, and she drew her
clenched hand close to her body. Still, she tried to smile at him.
His quiet, impersonal, though friendly look soothed her.
"Am I very sick!" she asked.
He shook his head and smiled. "You'll be all right to-morrow, I hope."
"That's too bad. I would like to be so sick that I couldn't think of
anything else. My father used to say that the world was only the size of
four walls to a sick person.
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