If spring came at all to Oak Creek Canyon it warmed into summer before

Carley had time to languish with the fever characteristic of early June

in the East.

As if by magic it seemed the green grass sprang up, the green buds

opened into leaves, the bluebells and primroses bloomed, the apple and

peach blossoms burst exquisitely white and pink against the blue sky.

Oak Creek fell to a transparent, beautiful brook, leisurely eddying in

the stone walled nooks, hurrying with murmur and babble over the little

falls. The mornings broke clear and fragrantly cool, the noon hours

seemed to lag under a hot sun, the nights fell like dark mantles from

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the melancholy star-sown sky.

Carley had stubbornly kept on riding and climbing until she killed her

secret doubt that she was really a thoroughbred, until she satisfied her

own insistent vanity that she could train to a point where this outdoor

life was not too much for her strength. She lost flesh despite increase

of appetite; she lost her pallor for a complexion of gold-brown she knew

her Eastern friends would admire; she wore out the blisters and aches

and pains; she found herself growing firmer of muscle, lither of line,

deeper of chest. And in addition to these physical manifestations there

were subtle intimations of a delight in a freedom of body she had never

before known, of an exhilaration in action that made her hot and made

her breathe, of a sloughing off of numberless petty and fussy and

luxurious little superficialities which she had supposed were necessary

to her happiness. What she had undertaken in vain conquest of Glenn's

pride and Flo Hutter's Western tolerance she had found to be a

boomerang. She had won Glenn's admiration; she had won the Western

girl's recognition. But her passionate, stubborn desire had been

ignoble, and was proved so by the rebound of her achievement, coming

home to her with a sweetness she had not the courage to accept. She

forced it from her. This West with its rawness, its ruggedness, she

hated.

Nevertheless, the June days passed, growing dreamily swift, growing more

incomprehensibly full; and still she had not broached to Glenn the main

object of her visit--to take him back East. Yet a little while

longer! She hated his work and had not talked of that. Yet an honest

consciousness told her that as time flew by she feared more and more to

tell him that he was wasting his life there and that she could not bear

it. Still was he wasting it? Once in a while a timid and unfamiliar

Carley Burch voiced a pregnant query. Perhaps what held Carley back most

was the happiness she achieved in her walks and rides with Glenn. She

lingered because of them. Every day she loved him more, and yet--there

was something. Was it in her or in him? She had a woman's assurance of

his love and sometimes she caught her breath--so sweet and strong was

the tumultuous emotion it stirred. She preferred to enjoy while she

could, to dream instead of think. But it was not possible to hold a

blank, dreamy, lulled consciousness all the time. Thought would return.

And not always could she drive away a feeling that Glenn would never be

her slave. She divined something in his mind that kept him gentle and

kindly, restrained always, sometimes melancholy and aloof, as if he

were an impassive destiny waiting for the iron consequences he knew

inevitably must fall. What was this that he knew which she did not know?

The idea haunted her. Perhaps it was that which compelled her to use all

her woman's wiles and charms on Glenn. Still, though it thrilled her to

see she made him love her more as the days passed, she could not blind

herself to the truth that no softness or allurement of hers changed this

strange restraint in him. How that baffled her! Was it resistance or

knowledge or nobility or doubt?




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