She has been a widow a long time now.

Why doesn't someone carry her off ?" Meanwhile Elizabeth, as she went down, dreamily, from step to step, her eyes bent apparrently upon the crowd which filled all the spaces of the great pictorial house, was conscious of one of those transforming impressions which represent the sudden uprush and consummation in the mind of some obscure and long-continued process.
One moment, she saw the restless scene below her, the diamonds, the uniforms, the blaze of electric light, the tapestries on the walls, the handsome faces of men and women; the next, it had been wiped out; the prairies unrolled before her; she beheld a green, boundless land invaded by a mirage of sunny water; scattered through it, the white farms; above it, a vast dome of sky, with summer clouds in glistening ranks climbing the steep of blue; and at the horizon's edge, a line of snow-peaks.

Her soul leapt within her.

It was as though she felt the freshness of the prairie wind upon her cheek, while the call of that distant land--Anderson's country--its simpler life, its undetermined fates, beat through her heart.
And as she answered to it, there was no sense of renunciation.

She was denying no old affection, deserting no ancient loyalty.