e aroused a mighty restlessness. Therefore, she rarely made
that short journey which spread another panorama of space before her. But
this was one of the afternoons when she welcomed a tumult of any kind as
a relief from her depression; and she went on through the V as soon as
she reached the summit.

Seated on a flat-topped rock, oblivious of the passage of time, of the
dream cities of the Eternal Painter, she was staring far away where the
narrowing gray line between the mountain rims met the sky. She was seeing
beyond the horizon. She was seeing cities of memory and reality. A great
yearning was in her heart. All the monotonous level lap of the heights
which seemed without end was a symbol that separated her from her desire.

She imagined herself in a Pullman, flashing by farms and villages; in a
shop selecting gowns; viewing from a high window the human stream of
Fifth Avenue; taking passage on a steamer; hearing again foreign tongues
long ago familiar to her ears; sensing the rustle of great audiences
before a curtain rose; glimpsing the Mediterranean from a car window;
feeling herself a unit in the throbbing promenade of the life of many
streets while her hunger took its fill of a busy world.

"It is hard to do it all in imagination!" she said to herself. "Even
imagination needs an occasional nest-egg of reality by way of
encouragement."

An hour on the far side of the pass played the emotional part for her of
a storm of tears for many another woman. She rejoiced in being utterly
alone; rejoiced in the grandeur of the very wastes around her as mounting
guard over the freedom of her thoughts. There was no living speck on the
trail, which she knew lay across the expanse of parched earth to the edge
of the blue dome; there was not even a bird in the air. Undisturbed, she
might think anything, pray for anything; she might feed the flame of
revolt till the fuel of many weeks' accumulation had burned itself out
and left her calm in the wisdom and understanding that reconciled her to
her portion and freshened to return through Galeria to the quiet routine
of her daily existence.

Her mind paused in its travels from capital to capital and she was
conscious solely of the stark majesty of her surroundings. She listened.
There was no sound. The spacious stillness was soothing to her nerves; a
specific when all the Eternal Painter's art failed. She closed her eyes,
trying to realize that great silence as one would try to