Chapter VI: Part I: Friends of Childhood (6)

Many a night that summer she left Dr. Archie’s office with a desire to run and run about those quiet streets until she wore out her shoes, or wore out the streets themselves; when her chest ached and it seemed as if her heart were spreading all over the desert. When she went home, it was not to go to sleep. She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window—or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation. It was on such nights that Thea Kronborg learned the thing that old Dumas meant when he told the Romanticists that to make a drama he needed but one passion and four walls.

XIX

It is well for its peace of mind that the traveling public takes railroads so much for granted. The only men who are incurably nervous about railway travel are the railroad operatives. A railroad man never forgets that the next run may be his turn.

On a single-track road, like that upon which Ray Kennedy worked, the freight trains make their way as best they can between passenger trains. Even when there is such a thing as a freight time-schedule, it is merely a form. Along the one track dozens of fast and slow trains dash in both directions, kept from collision only by the brains in the dispatcher’s office. If one passenger train is late, the whole schedule must be revised in an instant; the trains following must be warned, and those moving toward the belated train must be assigned new meeting-places.

Between the shifts and modifications of the passenger schedule, the freight trains play a game of their own. They have no right to the track at any given time, but are supposed to be on it when it is free, and to make the best time they can between passenger trains. A freight train, on a single-track road, gets anywhere at all only by stealing bases.

Ray Kennedy had stuck to the freight service, although he had had opportunities to go into the passenger service at higher pay. He always regarded railroading as a temporary makeshift, until he “got into something,” and he disliked the passenger service. No brass buttons for him, he said; too much like a livery. While he was railroading he would wear a jumper, thank you!

The wreck that “caught” Ray was a very commonplace one; nothing thrilling about it, and it got only six lines in the Denver papers. It happened about daybreak one morning, only thirty-two miles from home.

At four o’clock in the morning Ray’s train had stopped to take water at Saxony, having just rounded the long curve which lies south of that station. It was Joe Giddy’s business to walk back along the curve about three hundred yards and put out torpedoes to warn any train which might be coming up from behind—a freight crew is not notified of trains following, and the brakeman is supposed to protect his train. Ray was so fussy about the punctilious observance of orders that almost any brakeman would take a chance once in a while, from natural perversity.

When the train stopped for water that morning, Ray was at the desk in his caboose, making out his report. Giddy took his torpedoes, swung off the rear platform, and glanced back at the curve. He decided that he would not go back to flag this time. If anything was coming up behind, he could hear it in plenty of time. So he ran forward to look after a hot journal that had been bothering him. In a general way, Giddy’s reasoning was sound. If a freight train, or even a passenger train, had been coming up behind them, he could have heard it in time. But as it happened, a light engine, which made no noise at all, was coming,—ordered out to help with the freight that was piling up at the other end of the division. This engine got no warning, came round the curve, struck the caboose, went straight through it, and crashed into the heavy lumber car ahead.

The Kronborgs were just sitting down to breakfast, when the night telegraph operator dashed into the yard at a run and hammered on the front door. Gunner answered the knock, and the telegraph operator told him he wanted to see his father a minute, quick. Mr. Kronborg appeared at the door, napkin in hand. The operator was pale and panting.

“Fourteen was wrecked down at Saxony this morning,” he shouted, “and Kennedy’s all broke up. We’re sending an engine down with the doctor, and the operator at Saxony says Kennedy wants you to come along with us and bring your girl.” He stopped for breath.

Mr. Kronborg took off his glasses and began rubbing them with his napkin.

“Bring—I don’t understand,” he muttered. “How did this happen?”

“No time for that, sir. Getting the engine out now. Your girl, Thea. You’ll surely do that for the poor chap. Everybody knows he thinks the world of her.” Seeing that Mr. Kronborg showed no indication of having made up his mind, the operator turned to Gunner. “Call your sister, kid. I’m going to ask the girl herself,” he blurted out.

“Yes, yes, certainly. Daughter,” Mr. Kronborg called. He had somewhat recovered himself and reached to the hall hatrack for his hat.

Just as Thea came out on the front porch, before the operator had had time to explain to her, Dr. Archie’s ponies came up to the gate at a brisk trot. Archie jumped out the moment his driver stopped the team and came up to the bewildered girl without so much as saying good-morning to any one. He took her hand with the sympathetic, reassuring graveness which had helped her at more than one hard time in her life. “Get your hat, my girl. Kennedy’s hurt down the road, and he wants you to run down with me. They’ll have a car for us. Get into my buggy, Mr. Kronborg. I’ll drive you down, and Larry can come for the team.”

The driver jumped out of the buggy and Mr. Kronborg and the doctor got in. Thea, still bewildered, sat on her father’s knee. Dr. Archie gave his ponies a smart cut with the whip.

When they reached the depot, the engine, with one car attached, was standing on the main track. The engineer had got his steam up, and was leaning out of the cab impatiently. In a moment they were off. The run to Saxony took forty minutes. Thea sat still in her seat while Dr. Archie and her father talked about the wreck. She took no part in the conversation and asked no questions, but occasionally she looked at Dr. Archie with a frightened, inquiring glance, which he answered by an encouraging nod. Neither he nor her father said anything about how badly Ray was hurt. When the engine stopped near Saxony, the main track was already cleared. As they got out of the car, Dr. Archie pointed to a pile of ties.

“Thea, you’d better sit down here and watch the wreck crew while your father and I go up and look Kennedy over. I’ll come back for you when I get him fixed up.”

The two men went off up the sand gulch, and Thea sat down and looked at the pile of splintered wood and twisted iron that had lately been Ray’s caboose. She was frightened and absent-minded. She felt that she ought to be thinking about Ray, but her mind kept racing off to all sorts of trivial and irrelevant things. She wondered whether Grace Johnson would be furious when she came to take her music lesson and found nobody there to give it to her; whether she had forgotten to close the piano last night and whether Thor would get into the new room and mess the keys all up with his sticky fingers; whether Tillie would go upstairs and make her bed for her. Her mind worked fast, but she could fix it upon nothing. The grasshoppers, the lizards, distracted her attention and seemed more real to her than poor Ray.

On their way to the sand bank where Ray had been carried, Dr. Archie and Mr. Kronborg met the Saxony doctor. He shook hands with them.

“Nothing you can do, doctor. I couldn’t count the fractures. His back’s broken, too. He wouldn’t be alive now if he weren’t so confoundedly strong, poor chap. No use bothering him. I’ve given him morphia, one and a half, in eighths.”

Dr. Archie hurried on. Ray was lying on a flat canvas litter, under the shelter of a shelving bank, lightly shaded by a slender cottonwood tree. When the doctor and the preacher approached, he looked at them intently.

“Didn’t—” he closed his eyes to hide his bitter disappointment.

Dr. Archie knew what was the matter. “Thea’s back there, Ray. I’ll bring her as soon as I’ve had a look at you.”

Ray looked up. “You might clean me up a trifle, doc. Won’t need you for anything else, thank you all the same.”

However little there was left of him, that little was certainly Ray Kennedy. His personality was as positive as ever, and the blood and dirt on his face seemed merely accidental, to have nothing to do with the man himself. Dr. Archie told Mr. Kronborg to bring a pail of water, and he began to sponge Ray’s face and neck. Mr. Kronborg stood by, nervously rubbing his hands together and trying to think of something to say. Serious situations always embarrassed him and made him formal, even when he felt real sympathy.

“In times like this, Ray,” he brought out at last, crumpling up his handkerchief in his long fingers,—“in times like this, we don’t want to forget the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”

Ray looked up at him; a lonely, disconsolate smile played over his mouth and his square cheeks. “Never mind about all that, _padre_,” he said quietly. “Christ and me fell out long ago.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Ray took pity on Mr. Kronborg’s embarrassment. “You go back for the little girl, _padre_. I want a word with the doc in private.”

Ray talked to Dr. Archie for a few moments, then stopped suddenly, with a broad smile. Over the doctor’s shoulder he saw Thea coming up the gulch, in her pink chambray dress, carrying her sun-hat by the strings. Such a yellow head! He often told himself that he “was perfectly foolish about her hair.” The sight of her, coming, went through him softly, like the morphia. “There she is,” he whispered. “Get the old preacher out of the way, doc. I want to have a little talk with her.”

Dr. Archie looked up. Thea was hurrying and yet hanging back. She was more frightened than he had thought she would be. She had gone with him to see very sick people and had always been steady and calm. As she came up, she looked at the ground, and he could see that she had been crying.

Ray Kennedy made an unsuccessful effort to put out his hand. “Hello, little kid, nothing to be afraid of. Darned if I don’t believe they’ve gone and scared you! Nothing to cry about. I’m the same old goods, only a little dented. Sit down on my coat there, and keep me company. I’ve got to lay still a bit.”

Dr. Archie and Mr. Kronborg disappeared. Thea cast a timid glance after them, but she sat down resolutely and took Ray’s hand.

“You ain’t scared now, are you?” he asked affectionately. “You were a regular brick to come, Thee. Did you get any breakfast?”

“No, Ray, I’m not scared. Only I’m dreadful sorry you’re hurt, and I can’t help crying.”

His broad, earnest face, languid from the opium and smiling with such simple happiness, reassured her. She drew nearer to him and lifted his hand to her knee. He looked at her with his clear, shallow blue eyes. How he loved everything about that face and head! How many nights in his cupola, looking up the track, he had seen that face in the darkness; through the sleet and snow, or in the soft blue air when the moonlight slept on the desert.

“You needn’t bother to talk, Thee. The doctor’s medicine makes me sort of dopey. But it’s nice to have company. Kind of cozy, don’t you think? Pull my coat under you more. It’s a darned shame I can’t wait on you.”

“No, no, Ray. I’m all right. Yes, I like it here. And I guess you ought not to talk much, ought you? If you can sleep, I’ll stay right here, and be awful quiet. I feel just as much at home with you as ever, now.”

That simple, humble, faithful something in Ray’s eyes went straight to Thea’s heart. She did feel comfortable with him, and happy to give him so much happiness. It was the first time she had ever been conscious of that power to bestow intense happiness by simply being near any one. She always remembered this day as the beginning of that knowledge. She bent over him and put her lips softly to his cheek.

Ray’s eyes filled with light. “Oh, do that again, kid!” he said impulsively. Thea kissed him on the forehead, blushing faintly. Ray held her hand fast and closed his eyes with a deep sigh of happiness. The morphia and the sense of her nearness filled him with content. The gold mine, the oil well, the copper ledge—all pipe dreams, he mused, and this was a dream, too. He might have known it before. It had always been like that; the things he admired had always been away out of his reach: a college education, a gentleman’s manner, an Englishman’s accent—things over his head. And Thea was farther out of his reach than all the rest put together. He had been a fool to imagine it, but he was glad he had been a fool. She had given him one grand dream. Every mile of his run, from Moonstone to Denver, was painted with the colors of that hope. Every cactus knew about it. But now that it was not to be, he knew the truth. Thea was never meant for any rough fellow like him—hadn’t he really known that all along, he asked himself? She wasn’t meant for common men. She was like wedding cake, a thing to dream on. He raised his eyelids a little. She was stroking his hand and looking off into the distance. He felt in her face that look of unconscious power that Wunsch had seen there. Yes, she was bound for the big terminals of the world; no way stations for her. His lids drooped. In the dark he could see her as she would be after a while; in a box at the Tabor Grand in Denver, with diamonds on her neck and a tiara in her yellow hair, with all the people looking at her through their opera-glasses, and a United States Senator, maybe, talking to her. “Then you’ll remember me!” He opened his eyes, and they were full of tears.

Thea leaned closer. “What did you say, Ray? I couldn’t hear.”

“Then you’ll remember me,” he whispered.

The spark in his eye, which is one’s very self, caught the spark in hers that was herself, and for a moment they looked into each other’s natures. Thea realized how good and how great-hearted he was, and he realized about her many things. When that elusive spark of personality retreated in each of them, Thea still saw in his wet eyes her own face, very small, but much prettier than the cracked glass at home had ever shown it. It was the first time she had seen her face in that kindest mirror a woman can ever find.

Ray had felt things in that moment when he seemed to be looking into the very soul of Thea Kronborg. Yes, the gold mine, the oil well, the copper ledge, they’d all got away from him, as things will; but he’d backed a winner once in his life! With all his might he gave his faith to the broad little hand he held. He wished he could leave her the rugged strength of his body to help her through with it all. He would have liked to tell her a little about his old dream,—there seemed long years between him and it already,—but to tell her now would somehow be unfair; wouldn’t be quite the straightest thing in the world. Probably she knew, anyway. He looked up quickly. “You know, don’t you, Thee, that I think you are just the finest thing I’ve struck in this world?”

The tears ran down Thea’s cheeks. “You’re too good to me, Ray. You’re a lot too good to me,” she faltered.

“Why, kid,” he murmured, “everybody in this world’s going to be good to you!”

Dr. Archie came to the gulch and stood over his patient. “How’s it going?”

“Can’t you give me another punch with your pacifier, doc? The little girl had better run along now.” Ray released Thea’s hand. “See you later, Thee.”

She got up and moved away aimlessly, carrying her hat by the strings. Ray looked after her with the exaltation born of bodily pain and said between his teeth, “Always look after that girl, doc. She’s a queen!”

Thea and her father went back to Moonstone on the one-o’clock passenger. Dr. Archie stayed with Ray Kennedy until he died, late in the afternoon.

XX

On Monday morning, the day after Ray Kennedy’s funeral, Dr. Archie called at Mr. Kronborg’s study, a little room behind the church. Mr. Kronborg did not write out his sermons, but spoke from notes jotted upon small pieces of cardboard in a kind of shorthand of his own. As sermons go, they were not worse than most. His conventional rhetoric pleased the majority of his congregation, and Mr. Kronborg was generally regarded as a model preacher. He did not smoke, he never touched spirits. His indulgence in the pleasures of the table was an endearing bond between him and the women of his congregation. He ate enormously, with a zest which seemed incongruous with his spare frame.

This morning the doctor found him opening his mail and reading a pile of advertising circulars with deep attention.

“Good-morning, Mr. Kronborg,” said Dr. Archie, sitting down. “I came to see you on business. Poor Kennedy asked me to look after his affairs for him. Like most railroad men he spent his wages, except for a few investments in mines which don’t look to me very promising. But his life was insured for six hundred dollars in Thea’s favor.”

Mr. Kronborg wound his feet about the standard of his desk-chair. “I assure you, doctor, this is a complete surprise to me.”

“Well, it’s not very surprising to me,” Dr. Archie went on. “He talked to me about it the day he was hurt. He said he wanted the money to be used in a particular way, and in no other.” Dr. Archie paused meaningly.

Mr. Kronborg fidgeted. “I am sure Thea would observe his wishes in every respect.”

“No doubt; but he wanted me to see that you agreed to his plan. It seems that for some time Thea has wanted to go away to study music. It was Kennedy’s wish that she should take this money and go to Chicago this winter. He felt that it would be an advantage to her in a business way: that even if she came back here to teach, it would give her more authority and make her position here more comfortable.”

Mr. Kronborg looked a little startled. “She is very young,” he hesitated; “she is barely seventeen. Chicago is a long way from home. We would have to consider. I think, Dr. Archie, we had better consult Mrs. Kronborg.”

“I think I can bring Mrs. Kronborg around, if I have your consent. I’ve always found her pretty level-headed. I have several old classmates practicing in Chicago. One is a throat specialist. He has a good deal to do with singers. He probably knows the best piano teachers and could recommend a boarding-house where music students stay. I think Thea needs to get among a lot of young people who are clever like herself. Here she has no companions but old fellows like me. It’s not a natural life for a young girl. She’ll either get warped, or wither up before her time. If it will make you and Mrs. Kronborg feel any easier, I’ll be glad to take Thea to Chicago and see that she gets started right. This throat man I speak of is a big fellow in his line, and if I can get him interested, he may be able to put her in the way of a good many things. At any rate, he’ll know the right teachers. Of course, six hundred dollars won’t take her very far, but even half the winter there would be a great advantage. I think Kennedy sized the situation up exactly.”

“Perhaps; I don’t doubt it. You are very kind, Dr. Archie.” Mr. Kronborg was ornamenting his desk-blotter with hieroglyphics. “I should think Denver might be better. There we could watch over her. She is very young.”

Dr. Archie rose. “Kennedy didn’t mention Denver. He said Chicago, repeatedly. Under the circumstances, it seems to me we ought to try to carry out his wishes exactly, if Thea is willing.”

“Certainly, certainly. Thea is conscientious. She would not waste her opportunities.” Mr. Kronborg paused. “If Thea were your own daughter, doctor, would you consent to such a plan, at her present age?”

“I most certainly should. In fact, if she were my daughter, I’d have sent her away before this. She’s a most unusual child, and she’s only wasting herself here. At her age she ought to be learning, not teaching. She’ll never learn so quickly and easily as she will right now.”

“Well, doctor, you had better talk it over with Mrs. Kronborg. I make it a point to defer to her wishes in such matters. She understands all her children perfectly. I may say that she has all a mother’s insight, and more.”

Dr. Archie smiled. “Yes, and then some. I feel quite confident about Mrs. Kronborg. We usually agree. Good-morning.”

Dr. Archie stepped out into the hot sunshine and walked rapidly toward his office, with a determined look on his face. He found his waiting-room full of patients, and it was one o’clock before he had dismissed the last one. Then he shut his door and took a drink before going over to the hotel for his lunch. He smiled as he locked his cupboard. “I feel almost as gay as if I were going to get away for a winter myself,” he thought.

Afterward Thea could never remember much about that summer, or how she lived through her impatience. She was to set off with Dr. Archie on the fifteenth of October, and she gave lessons until the first of September. Then she began to get her clothes ready, and spent whole afternoons in the village dressmaker’s stuffy, littered little sewing-room. Thea and her mother made a trip to Denver to buy the materials for her dresses. Ready-made clothes for girls were not to be had in those days. Miss Spencer, the dressmaker, declared that she could do handsomely by Thea if they would only let her carry out her own ideas. But Mrs. Kronborg and Thea felt that Miss Spencer’s most daring productions might seem out of place in Chicago, so they restrained her with a firm hand. Tillie, who always helped Mrs. Kronborg with the family sewing, was for letting Miss Spencer challenge Chicago on Thea’s person. Since Ray Kennedy’s death, Thea had become more than ever one of Tillie’s heroines. Tillie swore each of her friends to secrecy, and, coming home from church or leaning over the fence, told them the most touching stories about Ray’s devotion, and how Thea would “never get over it.”

Tillie’s confidences stimulated the general discussion of Thea’s venture. This discussion went on, upon front porches and in back yards, pretty much all summer. Some people approved of Thea’s going to Chicago, but most people did not. There were others who changed their minds about it every day.

Tillie said she wanted Thea to have a ball dress “above all things.” She bought a fashion book especially devoted to evening clothes and looked hungrily over the colored plates, picking out costumes that would be becoming to “a blonde.” She wanted Thea to have all the gay clothes she herself had always longed for; clothes she often told herself she needed “to recite in.”

“Tillie,” Thea used to cry impatiently, “can’t you see that if Miss Spencer tried to make one of those things, she’d make me look like a circus girl? Anyhow, I don’t know anybody in Chicago. I won’t be going to parties.”

Tillie always replied with a knowing toss of her head, “You see! You’ll be in society before you know it. There ain’t many girls as accomplished as you.”

On the morning of the fifteenth of October the Kronborg family, all of them but Gus, who couldn’t leave the store, started for the station an hour before train time. Charley had taken Thea’s trunk and telescope to the depot in his delivery wagon early that morning. Thea wore her new blue serge traveling-dress, chosen for its serviceable qualities. She had done her hair up carefully, and had put a pale-blue ribbon around her throat, under a little lace collar that Mrs. Kohler had crocheted for her. As they went out of the gate, Mrs. Kronborg looked her over thoughtfully. Yes, that blue ribbon went very well with the dress, and with Thea’s eyes. Thea had a rather unusual touch about such things, she reflected comfortably. Tillie always said that Thea was “so indifferent to dress,” but her mother noticed that she usually put her clothes on well. She felt the more at ease about letting Thea go away from home, because she had good sense about her clothes and never tried to dress up too much. Her coloring was so individual, she was so unusually fair, that in the wrong clothes she might easily have been “conspicuous.”

It was a fine morning, and the family set out from the house in good spirits. Thea was quiet and calm. She had forgotten nothing, and she clung tightly to her handbag, which held her trunk-key and all of her money that was not in an envelope pinned to her chemise. Thea walked behind the others, holding Thor by the hand, and this time she did not feel that the procession was too long. Thor was uncommunicative that morning, and would only talk about how he would rather get a sand bur in his toe every day than wear shoes and stockings. As they passed the cottonwood grove where Thea often used to bring him in his cart, she asked him who would take him for nice long walks after sister went away.

“Oh, I can walk in our yard,” he replied unappreciatively. “I guess I can make a pond for my duck.”

Thea leaned down and looked into his face. “But you won’t forget about sister, will you?” Thor shook his head. “And won’t you be glad when sister comes back and can take you over to Mrs. Kohler’s to see the pigeons?”

“Yes, I’ll be glad. But I’m going to have a pigeon my own self.”

“But you haven’t got any little house for one. Maybe Axel would make you a little house.”

“Oh, her can live in the barn, her can,” Thor drawled indifferently.

Thea laughed and squeezed his hand. She always liked his sturdy matter-of-factness. Boys ought to be like that, she thought.

When they reached the depot, Mr. Kronborg paced the platform somewhat ceremoniously with his daughter. Any member of his flock would have gathered that he was giving her good counsel about meeting the temptations of the world. He did, indeed, begin to admonish her not to forget that talents come from our Heavenly Father and are to be used for his glory, but he cut his remarks short and looked at his watch. He believed that Thea was a religious girl, but when she looked at him with that intent, that passionately inquiring gaze which used to move even Wunsch, Mr. Kronborg suddenly felt his eloquence fail. Thea was like her mother, he reflected; you couldn’t put much sentiment across with her. As a usual thing, he liked girls to be a little more responsive. He liked them to blush at his compliments; as Mrs. Kronborg candidly said, “Father could be very soft with the girls.” But this morning he was thinking that hard-headedness was a reassuring quality in a daughter who was going to Chicago alone.

Mr. Kronborg believed that big cities were places where people went to lose their identity and to be wicked. He himself, when he was a student at the Seminary—he coughed and opened his watch again. He knew, of course, that a great deal of business went on in Chicago, that there was an active Board of Trade, and that hogs and cattle were slaughtered there. But when, as a young man, he had stopped over in Chicago, he had not interested himself in the commercial activities of the city. He remembered it as a place full of cheap shows and dance halls and boys from the country who were behaving disgustingly.

Dr. Archie drove up to the station about ten minutes before the train was due. His man tied the ponies and stood holding the doctor’s alligator-skin bag—very elegant, Thea thought it. Mrs. Kronborg did not burden the doctor with warnings and cautions. She said again that she hoped he could get Thea a comfortable place to stay, where they had good beds, and she hoped the landlady would be a woman who’d had children of her own. “I don’t go much on old maids looking after girls,” she remarked as she took a pin out of her own hat and thrust it into Thea’s blue turban. “You’ll be sure to lose your hatpins on the train, Thea. It’s better to have an extra one in case.” She tucked in a little curl that had escaped from Thea’s careful twist. “Don’t forget to brush your dress often, and pin it up to the curtains of your berth to-night, so it won’t wrinkle. If you get it wet, have a tailor press it before it draws.”

She turned Thea about by the shoulders and looked her over a last time. Yes, she looked very well. She wasn’t pretty, exactly,—her face was too broad and her nose was too big. But she had that lovely skin, and she looked fresh and sweet. She had always been a sweet-smelling child. Her mother had always liked to kiss her, when she happened to think of it.

The train whistled in, and Mr. Kronborg carried the canvas “telescope” into the car. Thea kissed them all good-bye. Tillie cried, but she was the only one who did. They all shouted things up at the closed window of the Pullman car, from which Thea looked down at them as from a frame, her face glowing with excitement, her turban a little tilted in spite of three hatpins. She had already taken off her new gloves to save them. Mrs. Kronborg reflected that she would never see just that same picture again, and as Thea’s car slid off along the rails, she wiped a tear from her eye. “She won’t come back a little girl,” Mrs. Kronborg said to her husband as they turned to go home. “Anyhow, she’s been a sweet one.”

While the Kronborg family were trooping slowly homeward, Thea was sitting in the Pullman, her telescope in the seat beside her, her handbag tightly gripped in her fingers. Dr. Archie had gone into the smoker. He thought she might be a little tearful, and that it would be kinder to leave her alone for a while. Her eyes did fill once, when she saw the last of the sand hills and realized that she was going to leave them behind for a long while. They always made her think of Ray, too. She had had such good times with him out there.

But, of course, it was herself and her own adventure that mattered to her. If youth did not matter so much to itself, it would never have the heart to go on. Thea was surprised that she did not feel a deeper sense of loss at leaving her old life behind her. It seemed, on the contrary, as she looked out at the yellow desert speeding by, that she had left very little. Everything that was essential seemed to be right there in the car with her. She lacked nothing. She even felt more compact and confident than usual. She was all there, and something else was there, too,—in her heart, was it, or under her cheek? Anyhow, it was about her somewhere, that warm sureness, that sturdy little companion with whom she shared a secret.

When Dr. Archie came in from the smoker, she was sitting still, looking intently out of the window and smiling, her lips a little parted, her hair in a blaze of sunshine. The doctor thought she was the prettiest thing he had ever seen, and very funny, with her telescope and big handbag. She made him feel jolly, and a little mournful, too. He knew that the splendid things of life are few, after all, and so very easy to miss.