a honeymoon.  Probably never will there be such another.  That the whole expedition was a piteous, dreary failure neither could have doubted ere the first week dragged by.  That the marriage journey which it ushered in was to be a failure likewise, neither could have questioned, ere the second week, which brought them home, had passed.  The Garden of Eden was there, there as certainly in its frost-brown sun-blessed perfection as though spread luxuriously within the tropics.  Adam was there, Adam prepared to accept it as normally content as the first man; but Eve was not satisfied.  Within the garden the serpent had shown his face and tempted her.  For very, very long she would not admit the fact even to herself, deluded herself by the belief that this newborn discontent was but temporary; yet bald, unaltering as the prairie itself, the truth stood forth.  Thus they went, and thus they returned.  Thus again thereafter the days went monotonously by.

One bright spot, and one alone, appeared on their firmament; and that was the opening of the new house.  This was to be a surprise, a climax boyishly reserved by its builder for their return.  The man had intentionally so arranged that the start should be from the old ranch, and in consequence the girl had never seen either the new or its furnishings, until the November day when the overloaded surrey drew up in the dooryard, and the journey was complete.  Pathetic, indescribable, in the light of the past, in the memory of the solitary hours that frontier nest represented, the moment must have been to the man when he led the way to the entrance and turned the key.  Yet he smiled as he threw open the door; and, standing there, ere she entered, he kissed her.

“It isn’t much, but it was mine, Bess, and now it’s yours,” he said, and, her hand in his, he crossed the threshold.

A moment the girl stood staring around her.  Crude as everything was, and cheap in aggregate, it spoke a testimony that was overwhelming.  Never before, not even that first night they had been alone, had the girl realised as at this moment what she meant to this solitary, impassive human.  Never before until these mute things he had fashioned with his own hands stood before her eyes did she realise fully his love.  With the knowledge now came a flood of repentance and of appreciation.  Her arms flew about his neck.  Her wet face was hid.

“How you love me, man,” she voiced.  “How you love me!”

“Yes, Bess,” said the other simply; and that was all.

For that day, and the next, and the next, the mood lasted, an awakening the girl began to fancy permanent; then inevitably came the reaction.  The man took up his duties where he had laid them down:  the supervision of a herd scattered of necessity to the winds, the personal inspection of a range that stretched away for miles.  Soon after daylight, his lunch for the day packed in the pouch he slung over his shoulder, he left astride the mouse-coloured, saddleless broncho; not to return until dark or later, tired and hungry, but ever smiling at the home-coming, ever considerate.  Thus the third night he returned to find the house dark and the fire in the soft coal stove dead; to find this and the girl stretched listless on the bed against the wall, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.