As soon as the baskets were unpacked and the chaperones were safely anchored on rugs and blankets with their backs against trees, there was a general demand, strongly backed by Ramon, that Conny should cook supper. He was soon absorbed in the process, volubly explaining every step, while the others gathered about him and offered [pg 69] encouragement and humorous suggestion. But there was soon a gradual dispersion of the group, some going for wood and some for water, and others on errands unstated.
Ramon found himself strolling under the cottonwoods with Julia. Neither of them had said anything. It was almost as though the tryst had been agreed upon before. She picked her way slowly among the tussocks of dried grass, her skirt daintily kilted. A faint but potent perfume from her hair and dress blew over him. He ventured to support her elbow with a reverent touch. Never had she seemed more desirable, nor yet, for some reason, more remote.
Suddenly she stopped and looked up at the great desert stars.
“Isn’t it big and beautiful?” she demanded. “And doesn’t it make you feel free? It’s never like this at home, somehow.”
“What is it like where you live?” he enquired. He had a persistent desire to see into her life and understand it, but everything she told him only made her more than ever to him a being of mysterious origin and destiny.
“It’s a funny little New York factory city with very staid ways,” she said. “You go to a dance at the country club every Saturday night and to tea parties and things in between. You fight, [pg 70] bleed and die for your social position and once in a while you stop and wonder why.… It’s a bore. You can see yourself going on doing the same thing till the day of your death.…”
Her discontent with things as they are found ready sympathy.
“That’s just the way it is here,” he said with conviction. “You can’t see anything ahead.”
“Oh, I don’t think its the same here at all,” she protested. “This country’s so big and interesting. It’s different.”
“Tell me how,” he demanded. “I haven’t seen anything interesting here since I got back,—except you.”