as Mrs. Hardy gazed from the car window
she acquired a habit of making with her tongue a sound which, owing to
the limitations of the alphabet, cannot be represented to the reader,
but which Irene understood to be an expression of mingled surprise,
pity, and contempt. Irene gathered that her mother did not approve of
prairies. They were something new to her life, and it was greatly to
be suspected that they were improper.

With very different emotions did the girl find herself speeding again
toward the scene of the first great event of her conscious life. For
her the boundlessness, the vastness, the immeasurable sweep of the eye,
suggested an environment out of which should grow a manhood and
womanhood that should weigh mightily in the scales of destiny of a
great nation; a manhood and womanhood defiant of the things that are,
eager for the adventure of life untrammeled by traditions. She had a
mental vision of the type which such a land must produce; her mind ran
to riots of daring as it fashioned a picture which should fairly
symbolize this people. . . . The day was drawing to a close, and a
prairie sunset glowed upon them in a flush of colouring that stirred
her artist soul. A cloudless sky, transparent as an ocean of glass;
fathomless, infinite, save when in the west inverted islands of gold
and brass and ruddy copper floated in a sea that gently deepened from
saffron to opal; and under that sky the yellow prairies; ever, forever,
and ever. . . . Up from the East came the night, and large, bright
stars stood out, and the click-clack of the car wheels came louder and
louder, and mimic car lamps raced along against the darkness outside.
And then the settlers' lights began to blink across the prairie, and
Irene's eyes were wet with an emotion she could not define; but she
knew her painting had missed something; it had been all outline and no
soul, and the prairies in the night are all soul and no outline; all
softness and vagueness and yearning unutterable. . . .

"How tiresome it is," said her mother. "Ask the porter to make up the
berths."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mrs. Hardy accepted the surroundings she found in the city that was to
be her home with not a little incredulity. For some days she treated
the city as a deep rascal which had disguised its true nature in order
to deceive her. She smiled at the ease with which she saw through all
disguises. One of these days the cloak of respectability would