As from afar she saw the great sculptured rent in the earth, green
and red and brown, with its shining, flashing ribbons of waterfalls and
streams. The mighty pines stood up magnificent and stately. The walls
loomed high, shadowed under the shelves, gleaming in the sunlight, and they
seemed dreaming, waiting, watching. For what? For her return to their
serene fastnesses--to the little gray log cabin. The thought stormed
Carley's soul.
Vivid and intense shone the images before her shut eyes. She saw the
winding forest floor, green with grass and fern, colorful with flower and
rock. A thousand aisles, glades, nooks, and caverns called her to come.
Nature was every woman's mother. The populated city was a delusion. Disease
and death and corruption stalked in the shadows of the streets. But her
canyon promised hard work, playful hours, dreaming idleness, beauty,
health, fragrance, loneliness, peace, wisdom, love, children, and long
life. In the hateful shut-in isolation of her room Carley stretched forth
her arms as if to embrace the vision. Pale close walls, gleaming placid
stretches of brook, churning amber and white rapids, mossy banks and
pine-matted ledges, the towers and turrets and ramparts where the eagles
wheeled--she saw them all as beloved images lost to her save in anguished
memory.
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