Doris sat in the bow. Her eyes roved from the sun-glittering stream to
the hills that rose above the tree-fringed valley floor, as if sight
had been restored to her so that her eyes could dwell upon the
green-leaved alder and maple, the drooping spruce bows, the vastness
of those forests of somber fir where the deer lurked in the shadows
and where the birds sang vespers and matins when dusk fell and dawn
came again. There were meadow larks warbling now on stumps that dotted
the floor of the Big Bend, and above the voices of those
yellow-breasted singers and the watery murmuring of the river there
arose now and then the shrill, imperative blast of a donkey engine.
"Where are we now, Bob?"
"About half a mile below the upper curve of the Big Bend," Hollister
replied.
Doris sat silent for awhile. Hollister, looking at her, was stricken
anew with wonder at her loveliness, with wonder at the contrast
between them. Beauty and the beast, he said to himself. He knew
without seeing. He did not wish to see. He strove to shut away thought
of the devastation of what had once been a man's goodly face.
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