assert himself at some time or other by throwing off the
disguise.

Was Bessie, the spoilt, pampered child of fashion with her soft, white
body, any more fit for a life lived close to nature than Blanch who was
naturally strong, sinuous and supple, though so softened by luxury and
the overrefinements of civilization? To all appearances, no. And yet,
the very things which seemed to pass by Blanch unheeded, began
imperceptibly to impress themselves upon Bessie. Possibly because Blanch
was so strong and individualized that, having once given herself up
wholly to the present life, she was enslaved irrevocably by it--held
fast by it with a power that had grown with her strength day by day--so
that while a weaker woman might slip through the meshes and escape, she
was held irresistibly bound through her own force and strength of
character.

The spell and magic of the land seemed to hold like an unseen hand all
things as in the grip of a vice, and were no less potent in the present
than they were in the past. The plaintive notes of the wood-dove found a
response within Bessie's soul. The winds seemed laden with new voices
and unconsciously interrupted the train of her thoughts and caused her
to pause and listen and wonder. The wild, forbidding landscape from
which her stronger companion involuntarily shrank, for some unknown
reason attracted her. The broad expanse of heaven and earth, the far
horizon, the hazy, mysterious silhouetted peaks of distant mountains
aroused vague longings within her--emotions which she did not understand
and concerning which she failed in her attempts to analyze.

Had she been at home, she would have regarded these new sensations as
sentimental enthusiasm and laughed at them, denying them a permanent
place in her nature. But here, it was different. They seemed to have a
hold upon one and were as irresistible as those vague longings that come
with the awakening of spring. There was music everywhere in the world
about her. Flowers of the imagination sprang from the desert on every
hand. Voices and hands called and beckoned to her from out the unseen.
The quickening and awakening within her gave promise of a new life, and
her feet became light as sunbeams. The fact of being alive and the
increasing desire to live filled her with a new joy and vigor that
darted through her soul like tongues of flame, causing her blood to
surge and tingle as never before since the days of childhood.

A genuine inter