the great caverns under the ramparts. As suddenly as
she had shut her eyes Carley opened them to face her friends.

"Let me get it over--quickly," she burst out, with hot blood surging
to her face. "I--I hated the West. It was so raw--so violent--so big.
I think I hate it more--now.... But it changed me--made me over
physically--and did something to my soul--God knows what.... And it has
saved Glenn. Oh! he is wonderful! You would never know him.... For long
I had not the courage to tell him I came to bring him back East. I kept
putting it off. And I rode, I climbed, I camped, I lived outdoors. At
first it nearly killed me. Then it grew bearable, and easier, until I
forgot. I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit now that somehow I had a
wonderful time, in spite of all.... Glenn's business is raising hogs. He
has a hog ranch. Doesn't it sound sordid? But things are not always
what they sound--or seem. Glenn is absorbed in his work. I hated it--I
expected to ridicule it. But I ended by infinitely respecting him. I
learned through his hog-raising the real nobility of work.... Well, at
last I found courage to ask him when he was coming back to New York. He
said 'never!'... I realized then my blindness, my selfishness. I could
not be his wife and live there. I could not. I was too small, too
miserable, too comfort-loving--too spoiled. And all the time he knew
this--knew I'd never be big enough to marry him.... That broke my heart.
I left him free--and here I am.... I beg you--don't ask me any more--and
never to mention it to me--so I can forget."

The tender unspoken sympathy of women who loved her proved comforting
in that trying hour. With the confession ruthlessly made the hard
compression in Carley's breast subsided, and her eyes cleared of a
hateful dimness. When they reached the taxi stand outside the station
Carley felt a rush of hot devitalized air from the street. She seemed
not to be able to get air into her lungs.

"Isn't it dreadfully hot?" she asked.

"This is a cool spell to what we had last week," replied Eleanor.

"Cool!" exclaimed Carley, as she wiped her moist face. "I wonder if you
Easterners know the real significance of words."

Then they entered a taxi, to be whisked away apparently through a
labyrinthine maze of cars and streets, where pedestrians had to run
and jump for their lives. A congestion of traffic at Fifth Avenue and
Forty-second Street halted their taxi for a few moments, and here in