Together they chose the lot on pepper-shaded Inez Avenue; together they
watched the rising of the concrete walls and planned the garden walks
and seats, and the tiny precious pool in the far corner. He was so
sympathetic! so admiring! He took as much pride in the big "drawing
room" on the third floor as she did herself. "Architecture is such fine
work to do at home!" they had both agreed. "Here you have your north
light--your big table--plenty of room for work! You will grow famouser
and famouser," he had lovingly insisted. And she had answered, "I fear
I shall be too contented, dear, to want to be famous."
That was only some year and a-half ago,--but Isabel, lying there by her
sleeping husband and sleeping child, was stark awake and only by
assertion happy. She was thinking, persistently, of dust. She loved a
delicate cleanliness. Her art was a precise one, her studio a workshop
of white paper and fine pointed hard pencils, her painting the
mechanical perfection of an even wash of color. And she saw, through
the floors and walls and the darkness, the dust in the little shaded
parlor--two days' dust at least, and Orchardina is very dusty!--dust in
the dining-room gathered since yesterday--the dust in the kitchen--she
would not count time there, and the dust--here she counted it
inexorably--the dust of eight days in her great, light workroom
upstairs.
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