He thought of the toil-hardened hands of the women of
his home. This girl represented all that he had been taught to abjure,
all that--by inheritance--he had in the abstract condemned. She
represented the vanities; she was vanity itself; and now he was
recklessly, contumaciously, glad of it. Her sheer loveliness of being
intoxicated him; suddenly it seemed as absolutely necessary to life as
the virtues of moral rectitude and homely labor. Personally, he
discovered, he preferred such beauty to the latter adamantine
qualities. He had a fleet moment of amazed self-consciousness: Elim
Meikeljohn--his father an elder in the house of God--astray in the
paths of condemned worldly frivolities! Then he recalled a little bush
of vivid red roses his mother carefully protected and cultivated; he
saw their bright fragrant patch on the rocky gray expanse of the
utilitarian acres; and suddenly a light of new understanding enveloped
his mother's gaunt drearily-clad figure. He employed in this connection
the surprising word "starved." ... Rosemary Roselle was a flower.
Indy returned with a small hat of honey-colored straw and a soft white-
silk mantilla. The former she drew upon the girl's head and wrapped the
shawl about the slim shoulders.
"Now," she pronounced decisively, "we're going to find your papa." She
led Rosemary Roselle toward the outer door. Elim found his cap in the
hall and followed them down the bricked steps to the street.
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