on concerning Arctic travel and gold-mining,
he, in turn, touch by touch, painted an ever clearer portrait of her.
She amplified the ranch life of her girlhood, prattling on about horses
and dogs and persons and things until it was as if he saw the whole
process of her growth and her becoming. All this he was able to trace
on through the period of her father's failure and death, when she had
been compelled to leave the university and go into office work. The
brother, too, she spoke of, and of her long struggle to have him cured
and of her now fading hopes. Daylight decided that it was easier to
come to an understanding of her than he had anticipated, though he was
always aware that behind and under all he knew of her was the
mysterious and baffling woman and sex. There, he was humble enough to
confess to himself, was a chartless, shoreless sea, about which he knew
nothing and which he must nevertheless somehow navigate.

His lifelong fear of woman had originated out of non-understanding and
had also prevented him from reaching any understanding. Dede on
horseback, Dede gathering poppies on a summer hillside, Dede taking
down dictation in her swift shorthand strokes--all this was
comprehensible to him. But he did not know the Dede who so quickly
changed from mood to mood, the Dede who refused steadfastly to ride
with him and then suddenly consented, the Dede in whose eyes the golden
glow forever waxed and waned and whispered hints and messages that were
not for his ears. In all such things he saw the glimmering
profundities of sex, acknowledged their lure, and accepted them as
incomprehensible.

There was another side of her, too, of which he was consciously
ignorant. She knew the books, was possessed of that mysterious and
awful thing called "culture." And yet, what continually surprised him
was that this culture was never obtruded on their intercourse. She did
not talk books, nor art, nor similar folderols. Homely minded as he
was himself, he found her almost equally homely minded. She liked the
simple and the out-of-doors, the horses and the hills, the sunlight and
the flowers. He found himself in a partly new flora, to which she was
the guide, pointing out to him all the varieties of the oaks, making
him acquainted with the madrono and the manzanita, teaching him the
names, habits, and habitats of unending series of wild flowers, shrubs,
and ferns. Her keen woods eye was another delight to him. It had