Carley realized how right and true it might be for
her to throw herself away upon an inferior man, even
a fool or a knave, if she loved him with that great
and natural love of woman; likewise it dawned upon
her how false and wrong and sinful it would be to
marry the greatest or the richest or the noblest man
unless she had that supreme love to give him, and knew
it was reciprocated.
“What am I going to do with my life?”
she asked, bitterly and aghast. “I have
been—I am a waster. I’ve lived
for nothing but pleasurable sensation. I’m
utterly useless. I do absolutely no good on earth.”
Thus she saw how Harrington’s words rang true—how
they had precipitated a crisis for which her unconscious
brooding had long made preparation.
“Why not give up ideals and be like the rest
of my kind?” she soliloquized.
That was one of the things which seemed wrong with
modern life. She thrust the thought from her
with passionate scorn. If poor, broken, ruined
Glenn Kilbourne could cling to an ideal and fight
for it, could not she, who had all the world esteemed
worth while, be woman enough to do the same? The
direction of her thought seemed to have changed.
She had been ready for rebellion. Three months
of the old life had shown her that for her it was
empty, vain, farcical, without one redeeming feature.
The naked truth was brutal, but it cut clean to wholesome
consciousness. Such so-called social life as
she had plunged into deliberately to forget her unhappiness
had failed her utterly. If she had been shallow
and frivolous it might have done otherwise. Stripped
of all guise, her actions must have been construed
by a penetrating and impartial judge as a mere parading
of her decorated person before a number of males with
the purpose of ultimate selection.
“I’ve got to find some work,” she
muttered, soberly.
At the moment she heard the postman’s whistle
outside; and a little later the servant brought up
her mail. The first letter, large, soiled, thick,
bore the postmark Flagstaff, and her address in Glenn
Kilbourne’s writing.
Carley stared at it. Her heart gave a great leap.
Her hand shook. She sat down suddenly as if the
strength of her legs was inadequate to uphold her.
“Glenn has—written me!” she
whispered, in slow, halting realization. “For
what? Oh, why?”
The other letters fell off her lap, to lie unnoticed.
This big thick envelope fascinated her. It was
one of the stamped envelopes she had seen in his cabin.
It contained a letter that had been written on his
rude table, before the open fire, in the light of
the doorway, in that little log-cabin under the spreading
pines of West Ford Canyon. Dared she read it?
The shock to her heart passed; and with mounting swell,
seemingly too full for her breast, it began to beat
and throb a wild gladness through all her being.
She tore the envelope apart and read:
