ling there entered something which was a kind of awe, almost an
actual fear. A man, a man like young Greek Conniston, was a small
matter out here; the desert a great, unmerciful, unrelenting God.

First loneliness, then awe tinged with a vague fear, and then
something which Conniston had never felt before in his life. A great,
deep admiration, a respect, a soul-troubling yearning toward the very
thing from which his city-trained senses shrank. He was experiencing
what the men who live upon its rim or deep in its heart are never free
from feeling. For all men fear the desert; and when they know it they
hate it, and even then the magic of it, brewed in the eternal
stillness, falls upon them, and though they draw back and curse it,
they love it! The desert calls, and he who hears must heed the call.
It calls with a voice which talks to his soul. It calls with the dim
lure of half-dreamed things. It beckons with the wavering streamers of
gold and crimson light thrown across the low horizon at sunrise and
sunset.

Greek Conniston was not an introspective man. His life, the life of a
rich man's son, had left little room for self-examination of mood and
purpose and character. He had done well enough during his four years
in the university, not because he was ambitious, but simply because
he was not a fool and found a mild satisfaction in passing his
examinations. Nature had cast him in a generous physical mold, and he
had aided nature on diamond and gridiron. He had taken his place in
society, had driven his car and ridden his horses. He had through it
all spent the money which came in a steady stream from the ample
coffers of William Conniston, Senior. His had been a busy life, a life
filled with dinners and dances and theaters and races. He had not had
time to think. And certainly he had not had need to think.

But now, under the calm gaze of the desert, he found himself turning
his thoughts inward. He had been driven out of his father's house. He
had been called a dawdler and a trifler and a do-nothing. He had been
told by a stern old man who was a _man_ that he was a disgrace to his
name. He had never done anything but dance and smoke and drink and
make pretty speeches which were polite lies and which were accepted as
such. And now a minor note, as thin as a low-toned human voice heard
faintly through the deep music of a cathedral organ, something seemed
to call to him telling him again of these things.

The darkening