willowfringed streams making contrast with the yellowed fields of
early harvest time.

She stood there poised like a bird on the rim of the world. Her
slimness, her sure grace, her yellow hair shining under the beach hat
she wore tilted back from her face, struck him like a blow in the face
from that pleasurable past wherein woman beauty had been so abundant.
She was of the town; moreover, he felt that she was of the town from
which he had fled in guilt and terror. She stood for a long minute,
taking in the full sweep of the rugged peak. She was not looking at
him especially, until she turned to go on. Then she waved her hand
carelessly--slightingly, he felt in his misery--and went down the
steep slope.

Until he could no longer see the crown of her hat he looked after her.
Then, the sickness of his terrible loneliness upon him again, he
turned and slowly climbed back to his glass-walled prison.




CHAPTER NINE

LIKE THE BOY HE WAS


Down the balsam and manzanita slope toward the little valley where she
lived, Jack stared hungrily during many an empty, dragging hour. Until
the darkness had twice drawn down the black curtain that shut him away
from the world, he had hoped she would come. She had been so friendly,