gray fires of dawn began to warm the cloud-banks
on the eastern horizon, stood beside her window and watched in silent
ecstasy. Jim was sleeping heavily. She would not wake him until the
glory of the sunrise was at its height. She loved to watch the changing
lights and shadows in sky and valley and on distant mountain peaks as
the light slowly filtered over the eastern hills.

She had recovered from the depression of the last days of their camp.
The journey back into the world had improved Jim's manners. There could
be no doubt about his ambitions. His determination to be a millionaire
was the lever she now meant to work in raising his social aspirations.

Why should she feel depressed?

Their married life had just begun. The two weeks they had passed on
their honeymoon had been happy beyond her dreams of happiness. Somehow
her imagination had failed to give any conception of the wonder and
glory of this revelation of life. His little lapses of selfishness on
their sand island no doubt came from ignorance of what was expected of
him.

For one thing she felt especially thankful. There had been no ugly
confessions of a shady past to cloud the joy of their love. Her lover
might be ignorant of the ways of polite society. He was equally free of
its sinister vices. She thanked God for that. The soul of the man she
had married was clean of all memories of women. The love he gave was
fierce in its unrestrained passion--but it was all hers. She gloried in
its strength.

She made up her mind, standing there in the soft light of the dawn, that
she would bend his iron will to her own in the growing, sweet intimacy
of their married life and threw her fears to the winds.

The thin, fleecy clouds that hung over the low range of the eastern
foreground were all aglow now, with every tint of the rainbow, while the
sun's bed beyond the hills was flaming in scarlet and gold.

She clapped her hands in ecstasy.

"Jim! Jim, dear!"

He made no response, and she rushed to his side and whispered:

"You must see this sunrise--get up quick, quick, dear. It's wonderful."

"What's the matter?" he muttered.

"The sunrise over the mountains--quick--it's glorious."

His heavy eyelids drooped and closed. He dropped on the pillow and
buried his face out of sight.

"Ah, Jim dear, do come--just to please me."

"I'm dead, Kiddo--dead to the world," he sighed. "Don't like to see the
sun rise. I never did. Come on back and let's sleep----"