er. She had never been alone for so long before, or
thought so much. Nothing had ever engrossed her so deeply as the daily
contemplation of that line of pale-yellow houses tucked into the wrinkle
of the cliff. Moonstone and Chicago had become vague. Here everything
was simple and definite, as things had been in childhood. Her mind was
like a ragbag into which she had been frantically thrusting whatever she
could grab. And here she must throw this lumber away. The things that
were really hers separated themselves from the rest. Her ideas were
simplified, became sharper and clearer. She felt united and strong.

When Thea had been at the Ottenburg ranch for two months, she got a
letter from Fred announcing that he "might be along at almost any time
now." The letter came at night, and the next morning she took it down
into the canyon with her. She was delighted that he was coming soon. She
had never felt so grateful to any one, and she wanted to tell him
everything that had happened to her since she had been there--more than
had happened in all her life before. Certainly she liked Fred better
than any one else in the world. There was Harsanyi, of course--but
Harsanyi was always tired. Just now, and here, she wanted some one who
had never been tired, who could catch an idea and run with it.

She was ashamed to think what an apprehensive drudge she must always
have seemed to Fred, and she wondered why he had concerned himself about
her at all. Perhaps she would never be so happy or so good-looking
again, and she would like Fred to see her, for once, at her best. She
had not been singing much, but she knew that her voice was more
interesting than it had ever been before. She had begun to understand
that--with her, at least--voice was, first of all, vitality; a lightness
in the body and a driving power in the blood. If she had that, she could
sing. When she felt so keenly alive, lying on that insensible shelf of
stone, when her body bounded like a rubber ball away from its hardness,
then she could sing. This, too, she could explain to Fred. He would know
what she meant.

Another week passed. Thea did the same things as before, felt the same
influences, went over the same ideas; but there was a livelier movement
in her thoughts, and a freshening of sensation, like the brightness
which came over the underbrush after a shower. A persistent
affirmation--or denial--was going on in her, like the tapping of the
woodpecker in the o