There was a
strange shock in this idea. She felt that Carrington was further
from her. He gained dignity in his rebel isolation. She wanted to
ask him how he could have been a traitor, and she did not dare.
Carrington a traitor!
Carrington killing her friends! The idea was too large to grasp. She
fell back on the simpler task of wondering how he had looked in
his rebel uniform.
They rode slowly round to the door of the house and dismounted,
after he had with some difficulty found a man to hold their horses.
From the heavy brick porch they looked across the superb river to
the raw and incoherent ugliness of the city, idealised into dreamy
beauty by the atmosphere, and the soft background of purple hills
behind. Opposite them, with its crude "thus saith the law" stamped
on white dome and fortress-like walls, rose the Capitol.
Carrington stood with her a short time while they looked at the
view; then said he would rather not go into the house himself, and
sat down on the steps while she strolled alone through the rooms.
These were bare and gaunt, so that she, with her feminine sense of
fitness, of course considered what she would do to make them
habitable. She had a neat fancy for furniture, and distributed her
tones and half tones and bits of colour freely about the walls and
ceilings, with a high-backed chair here, a spindle-legged sofa
there, and a claw-footed table in the centre, until her eye was
caught by a very dirty deal desk, on which stood an open book,
with an inkstand and some pens.
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