I don't reckon you ever saw
finer blooms--not even in a greenhouse. Naw'm, I ain't been the
complaining sort. I've got a lot to be thankful for, and I know it."
Her old eyes shone; her sunken mouth was trembling, not with self-pity,
Corinna realized, with a pang that was strangely like terror, but with
the courage of living. The pathos of it appeared intolerable for a
moment; and gathering her cloak about her, Corinna felt that she must
cover her eyes and fly before she broke out into hysterical screaming.
Then the terror passed; and she saw, in a single piercing flash of
insight, that what she had mistaken for ugliness was simply an
impalpable manifestation of beauty. Beauty! Why it was everywhere! It
was with her now in this squalid house, in the presence of this crippled
old woman, unmoved by death, inured to poverty, screwing, grinding,
pinching, like flint to the crying baby, and yet cherishing the blooms
of her red geranium, her passionate horror of the poor house, and her
dream of six feet of free earth not paid for by charity at the end.
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