a raw unheated wound in Carley's heart. Seldom had she
permitted herself to think about it, let alone to probe it with hard
materialistic queries. But custom to her was as inexorable as life. If
she chose to live in the world she must conform to its customs. For
a woman marriage was the aim and the end and the all of existence.
Nevertheless, for Carley it could not be without love. Before she had
gone West she might have had many of the conventional modern ideas about
women and marriage. But because out there in the wilds her love and
perception had broadened, now her arraignment of herself and her sex
was bigger, sterner, more exacting. The months she had been home seemed
fuller than all the months of her life. She had tried to forget and
enjoy; she had not succeeded; but she had looked with far-seeing eyes at
her world. Glenn Kilbourne's tragic fate had opened her eyes.

Either the world was all wrong or the people in it were. But if that
were an extravagant and erroneous supposition, there certainly was proof
positive that her own small individual world was wrong. The women
did not do any real work; they did not bear children; they lived on
excitement and luxury. They had no ideals. How greatly were men to
blame? Carley doubted her judgment here. But as men could not live
without the smiles and comradeship and love of women, it was only
natural that they should give the women what they wanted. Indeed, they
had no choice. It was give or go without. How much of real love entered
into the marriages among her acquaintances? Before marriage Carley
wanted a girl to be sweet, proud, aloof, with a heart of golden fire.
Not attainable except through love! It would be better that no children
be born at all unless born of such beautiful love. Perhaps that was
why so few children were born. Nature's balance and revenge! In Arizona
Carley had learned something of the ruthlessness and inevitableness
of nature. She was finding out she had learned this with many other
staggering facts.

"I love Glenn still," she whispered, passionately, with trembling lips,
as she faced the tragic-eyed image of herself in the mirror. "I love him
more--more. Oh, my God! If I were honest I'd cry out the truth! It is
terrible. ... I will always love him. How then could I marry any other
man? I would be a lie, a cheat. If I could only forget him--only kill
that love. Then I might love another man--and if I did love him--no
matter what I had felt or do