eaked range of the
Rockies. Far to the north, standing aloof from the range, loomed up the
grand black bulk and noble white dome of Pikes Peak.

Carley watched the sunset transfiguration of cloud and sky and mountain
until all were cold and gray. And then she returned to her seat,
thoughtful and sad, feeling that the West had mockingly flung at her one
of its transient moments of loveliness.

Nor had the West wholly finished with her. Next day the mellow gold of
the Kansas wheat fields, endless and boundless as a sunny sea, rich,
waving in the wind, stretched away before her aching eyes for hours
and hours. Here was the promise fulfilled, the bountiful harvest of the
land, the strength of the West. The great middle state had a heart of
gold.

East of Chicago Carley began to feel that the long days and nights of
riding, the ceaseless turning of the wheels, the constant and wearing
stress of emotion, had removed her an immeasurable distance of miles and
time and feeling from the scene of her catastrophe. Many days seemed to
have passed. Many had been the hours of her bitter regret and anguish.

Indiana and Ohio, with their green pastoral farms, and numberless
villages, and thriving cities, denoted a country far removed and
different from the West, and an approach to the populous East. Carley
felt like a wanderer coming home. She was restlessly and impatiently
glad. But her weariness of body and mind, and the close atmosphere of
the car, rendered her extreme discomfort. Summer had laid its hot hand
on the low country east of the Mississippi.

Carley had wired her aunt and two of her intimate friends to meet her at
the Grand Central Station. This reunion soon to come affected Carley
in recurrent emotions of relief, gladness, and shame. She did not sleep
well, and arose early, and when the train reached Albany she felt that
she could hardly endure the tedious hours. The majestic Hudson and the
palatial mansions on the wooded bluffs proclaimed to Carley that she was
back in the East. How long a time seemed to have passed! Either she was
not the same or the aspect of everything had changed. But she believed
that as soon as she got over the ordeal of meeting her friends, and was
home again, she would soon see things rationally.

At last the train sheered away from the broad Hudson and entered
the environs of New York. Carley sat perfectly still, to all outward
appearances a calm, superbly-poised New York woman returning h