Page:The Professor's House - Willa Cather.pdf/287

 deaths which seemed to happen so frequently along her way, because her manner of speaking about it made death seem less uncomfortable. She hadn’t any of the sentimentality that comes from a fear of dying. She talked about death as she spoke of a hard winter or a rainy March, or any of the sadnesses of nature.

It occurred to St. Peter, as he lay warm and relaxed but undesirous of sleep, that he would rather have Augusta with him just now than anyone he could think of. Seasoned and sound and on the solid earth she surely was, and, for all her matter-of-factness and hard-handedness, kind and loyal. He even felt a sense of obligation toward her, instinctive, escaping definition, but real. And when you admitted that a thing was real, that was enough—now.

He didn’t, on being quite honest with himself, feel any obligations toward his family. Lillian had had the best years of his life, nearly thirty, and joyful years they had been, nothing could ever change that. But they were gone. His daughters had outgrown any great need of him. In certain wayward moods Kitty would always come to him. But Rosamond, on that shopping expedition in Chicago, had shown him how painful the paternal relation could be. There was still Augusta, however; a world full of Augustas, with whom one was outward bound.