Cunningham. She found that the memory of her hour with Calise had lost all its magic. The atmosphere of singular purity in that orderly room, her own involuntary frankness, and Calise’s talk of God and content and mountain flowers, all seemed slightly ridiculous in retrospect. Perhaps this was in part due to Luther Mablett’s comments on Calise in the mine office, “batty as a March hare, sees ghosts and stuff,” but it was largely due to Amanda’s fear that she might again betray her thoughts and that mention of her preoccupation with the Pueblo Encantado would elicit from Calise even less approval than it had from Dart. She had no reason for this conviction, but it was nevertheless a certainty. She reached home again about one o’clock, ate some bread and jam and drank some tea, then looked longingly at Anthony Adverse, the last book Jean had sent her. She had already been entranced by its opening pages, and the atmosphere of romantic passion and derring-do. There was, however, a pile of Dart’s shirts to be pressed, and there was mending, and at both tasks she continued to be remarkably inept.
