morning, filled the whole valley with a yellow radiance. And out along
the water course a meadowlark sang.

The girl threw up her arm swinging the hat over her head. She wanted
to shout. She felt the sweeping surge of spring, the call of the wind,
the glow of the sunlight, the boundless freedom of the desert. She had
never felt so abounding in exuberant hope. It had been hard work to
hold on to this lease, a fight for bread at times. But wealth was here
in this soil and in this sun. And more than wealth. There was health
and liberty in it. No heckling social restrictions, no vapid idle
piffle at dull teas; no lugubrious pretence of burdensome duties. Here
one slept and ate and worked and watched the changing light, and
breathed the desert air and lived. It was a good world.

The girl stopped and crumbled some of the newly plowed earth under the
toe of a trim shoe. How queer that after all these hundreds and
thousands of years the stored chemicals of this land should be
released, and turned by those streams of water into streams of
wealth--fleecy cotton, luscious fruit and melons, food and clothes.
And what nice people lived out here. The Chinamen who worked in the
field, quaint and friendly and faithful. Even the Mexicans with their
less industrious and more tricky habits were warm hearted and
courteous. That serenading Madrigal was very interesting--and
handsome. He had fire in him; perhaps dangerous fire, but what a
contrast to the vapid white-collared clerks or professors in the prim
little eastern town she had known.

Of course Bob Rogeen did not like him. Imogene instinctively put up
her hand and brushed the wind-blown hair from her forehead, and smiled.

Bob was jealous.

But what a man Rogeen was! She had believed there were such men so
unobtrusively generous and chivalrous. But no one she had ever known
before was quite like Bob Rogeen. She remembered the black hair that
clustered thickly over his temples, and the whimsical twist of his
mouth, and the reticent but unafraid brown eyes.

She had thought many, many times of Rogeen, and always it seemed that
he filled in just what was wanting in this desert--warmth of human
fellowship. Always she thought of him just north over there--out of
sight but very near. True he came very rarely. She wrinkled her
forehead and rubbed the end of her nose with a forefinger. Why was
that? Why didn't he come oftener? Wasn't she interesting? Didn'