When dreams come true

by Ritter Brown

At first she laughed scornfully, then hysterically.

"Was he mad to suggest such folly—imagine that she could even dream of participating in such a life? He might give up the ambition of a lifetime, fling aside a brilliant career to follow the path of his mad fancy if he chose, but she would not be a partner to his folly!"

Again he noted her set lips and the pallor that succeeded the flush on her cheeks after her first furious outburst. Again he saw her as she rose, pale and trembling, her eyes blazing.

"And you dare come to me with this after all the years I have waited for you? Go back to your deserts—your wild woman and her land of savages!" she had cried in a voice of suppressed indignation and contempt. After all he could not blame her, knowing as he did the world in which she had been reared. She was right. And yet, as he sat there in the desert with his back to the cliff and smoked in silence, living over again the poignant memories of the past, the bitterness he experienced at the moment was even keener than on that memorable night when they had parted.

Could he ever forget her? The memory of that night clung to him in spite of every effort to banish it from his mind.

Above them shone the stars, golden as the apples of Hesperides. He heard again the rhythmic sound of the sea and the plashing of the fountain near at hand, and noted the rose petals which the breeze had shaken from the bushes to the path where they stood; filling the soft night air with their fragrance, and she, with the white moonlight in her face and the pink rose in the golden wreath of her hair, fair as the woman of Eden.

The vision passed before him in kaleidoscopic review, warm and living and tempting and haunting, and then faded from his sight.

The shadows of evening began to lengthen. Close at hand a lizard that had been sunning itself all day against the cliff raised its head for an instant, then slipped noiselessly away with the shadows into a crevice in the rock. The Indian camp-fires flickered in the valley below, their slender, ghostlike columns of smoke, rising heavenward straight as the flight of a flock of cranes, floated away in a pale, blue white cloud on the evening. The soft, plaintive notes of the night-hawk and prairie-owl mingled with the prolonged cry of the wolf in the distant foothills. The night breeze sprang up, fanning the parched desert with its cool breath. The stars came forth and the silver rim of the moon emerged above the dark towering mass of the Sierra Madres, outlining their crests in broken silvery lines as its full white disk swept into view; flooding the valley and plains with strange ethereal light.

José's sleep seemed troubled. He moved uneasily and muttered incoherently.

Where was she now—what was she doing? The woman he still loved in spite of himself? And whither was he drifting—what was the real end in view? What subtle, irresistible influence was it that impelled him to take the step, sacrifice all that men prize and hold dear? During such moments he questioned the seemingly blind destiny by which he felt himself impelled. A thousand miles he had ridden in search of the realization of his dreams, but had not found it. That which at first had lured him on, now seemed to mock him. The vision that beckoned to him still maintained a sphinx-like attitude toward his questioning.