The sharp and apparently impossible contrasts, the magic illusions of
color made it a land of remote enchantment, even to the most
unimaginative. And to Hanson the world outside became as unreal as a
dream that is past. Here was beauty, and the wide, free spaces of
nature, where every law of man seemed puny, ineffectual and void. In
this unbounded, uncharted freedom the shackles of conventionality fell
from him. Here was life and here was love. He was a primitive man, and
here, before him in visible form, stood the world's desire. Barriers
there were none. A man and woman, both as vital as the morning, and love
between them. The craving heart of the eternal man rose up in Hanson,
imperatively urging him to claim his own.

He drew his hand across his brow almost dazedly. "Whew!" he muttered,
"I kind of remember when I was a kid that my mother used to tell me
about the Garden of Eden. I thought it was a pipe dream, but, George!
it's true--it's true, and I can't quite believe it."

The Pearl stood leaning against a great palm tree. She seemed hardly to
hear him. Her eyes were on the waving, shimmering horizon line of the
desert. Her face held a sort of wistful dreaming.

"'The Garden of Eden!'" she repeated. "I've heard of it, too. It was a
place where you were always happy, but"--still wistfully--"I haven't
found that place yet." She turned her vaguely troubled eyes on him and
then sighed and drooped against the tree.

"You can have things as you please, if you'll come to me." His speech
was rapid, hard-breathing; it was as if he hardly knew what he was
saying, but was talking merely to relieve the tension. "I'm boss and I
can manage that you shall dance when you please, and come back here for