Carley had stubbornly kept on riding and climbing until she killed her
secret doubt that she was really a thoroughbred, until she satisfied her
own insistent vanity that she could train to a point where this outdoor
life was not too much for her strength. She lost flesh despite increase of
appetite; she lost her pallor for a complexion of gold-brown she knew her
Eastern friends would admire; she wore out the blisters and aches and
pains; she found herself growing firmer of muscle, lither of line, deeper
of chest. And in addition to these physical manifestations there were
subtle intimations of a delight in a freedom of body she had never before
known, of an exhilaration in action that made her hot and made her breathe,
of a sloughing off of numberless petty and fussy and luxurious little
superficialities which she had supposed were necessary to her happiness.
What she had undertaken in vain conquest of Glenn's pride and Flo Hutter's
Western tolerance she had found to be a boomerang. She had won Glenn's
admiration; she had won the Western girl's recognition. But her passionate,
stubborn desire had been ignoble, and was proved so by the rebound of her
achievement, coming home to her with a sweetness she had not the courage to
accept.
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