Rare Earth
window that opened out upon the garden wherein her little boy played and sang. The sound of his baby laughter was the sweetest of all music to her.
The affairs of the household were entrusted to the capable hands of servants while the mistress devoted herself to the art wherein she was a master. In painting she believed that the lines in a picture did not count so much as the lines left out. A single line to denote a mountain, a curved line for the sea. The colors which she used the most were yellow and purple. Yellow because it was the color of the sun. Purple because it was the last color of departing day tinting the sky. Frequently she painted miniatures in which there was no color save yellow blended in a hundred different tones. Yellow magic was in the tip of her brush.
Meanwhile her husband went each day to his jewelry shop in that vast alley where rare jewels are sold, the shop where his father before him had been a jewel merchant. He
knew gems absolutely. He read them as if they
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