t. Her studied
gaze absorbed an endless changing. And at last she realized that sun and
light and stars and moon and night and shade, all working incessantly
and mutably over shapes and lines and angles and surfaces too numerous
and too great for the sight of man to hold, made an ever-changing
spectacle of supreme beauty and colorful grandeur.

She talked very little while at the Canyon. It silenced her. She had
come to see it at the critical time of her life and in the right mood.
The superficialities of the world shrunk to their proper insignificance.
Once she asked her aunt: "Why did not Glenn bring me here?" As if this
Canyon proved the nature of all things!

But in the end Carley found that the rending strife of the
transformation of her attitude toward life had insensibly ceased. It had
ceased during the long watching of this cataclysm of nature, this canyon
of gold-banded black-fringed ramparts, and red-walled mountains which
sloped down to be lost in purple depths. That was final proof of the
strength of nature to soothe, to clarify, to stabilize the tried and
weary and upward-gazing soul. Stronger than the recorded deeds of
saints, stronger than the eloquence of the gifted uplifters of
men, stronger than any words ever written, was the grand, brooding,
sculptured aspect of nature. And it must have been so because thousands
of years before the age of saints or preachers--before the fret
and symbol and figure were cut in stone--man must have watched with
thought-developing sight the wonders of the earth, the monuments of
time, the glooming of the dark-blue sea, the handiwork of God.

In May, Carley returned to Flagstaff to take up with earnest inspiration
the labors of homebuilding in a primitive land.

It required two trucks to transport her baggage and purchases out to
Deep Lake. The road was good for eighteen miles of the distance, until
it branched off to reach her land, and from there it was desert rock
and sand. But eventually they made it; and Carley found herself and
belongings dumped out into the windy and sunny open. The moment was
singularly thrilling and full of transport. She was free. She had shaken
off the shackles. She faced lonely, wild, barren desert that must be
made habitable by the genius of her direction and the labor of her
hands. Always a thought of Glenn hovered tenderly, dreamily in the back
of her consciousness, but she welcomed the opportunity to have a few
weeks of work and acti