Once I even forgot and started to applaud
when Perry raised his hand over the gray head as though in blessing and
said solemnly: "He-ro in blue--agin we bid you welcome!"
A little laugh behind me recalled me to my real place, and with a
burning face I turned.
I have in my mind a thousand pictures of one woman. But of them all
the one I love most, the one on which I dwell most as I sit of an
evening with my pipe and my unopened book, is that which I first saw
when I sought the chit who noticed my ill-timed applause and laughed at
me. I found her. I saw that she laughed with me and for me, and I
laughed too. We laughed together. An instant, and her face became
grave.
The orator, now swelling into his peroration, was forgotten. The
people of the valley--Tim--even Tim--all of them were forgotten. I had
found the woman of my firelight, the woman of my cloudland, the woman
of my sunset country down in the mountains to the west. She, had
always been a vague, undefined creature to me--just a woman, and so
elusive as never to get within the grasp of my mind's eye; just a woman
whom I had endowed with every grace; whose kindly spirit shone through
eyes, now brown, now blue, now black, according to my latest whim; who
ofttimes worn, or perhaps feigning weariness, rested on my shoulder a
little head, crowned with a glory of hair sometimes black, and
sometimes golden or auburn, and not infrequently red, a dashing, daring
red.
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