She was certain of it when she heard Calumet cross the porch with a
rapid step, and if in her certainty there had been the slightest doubt,
it disappeared when he opened the kitchen door.
He looked tired; he had evidently ridden hard, for the alkali dust was
thick on his clothing; he was breathing fast, his eyes were burning
with some deep emotion, his lips were grim and hard.
He closed the door and stood with his back against it, looking at her.
Something had wrought a wonderful change in him. He was not the
Calumet she had known--brutal, vicious, domineering, sneering; though
he was laboring under some great excitement, suppressing it, so that to
an eye less keen than hers it might have seemed that he had been
undergoing some great physical exertion and was just recovering from
it. It seemed to her that he had found himself; that that regeneration
for which she had hoped had come--had taken place between the time he
had left that morning and now.
She did not know that it had been a mighty struggle of three days'
duration; that the transformation had been a slow, tortuous thing to
him. She only knew that a great change had come over him; that, in
spite of the evident strain which was upon him, there was something
gentle, respectful, considerate, in his face, back of Its exterior
hardness--a slumbering, triumphant something that made an instant
appeal to her, lighting her eyes, coloring her face, making her heart
beat with an unaccountable gladness.
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