She had come to him under the oaks, and yet again, quitting her friends, drawn to the lonely desert man.
“They told me Genie’s story,” she said, and her eyes spoke eloquent praise her lips denied. “And so—her mother and father died on the desert.... Tell me, desert man, what does Death Valley look like?”
“It is night; it is hell—death and desolation—the grave of the desert, yellow and red and gray—lonely, lonely, lonely silent land!”
“But you love it!... Genie says the Indians call you Eagle—because you have the eye of the eagle.... Tell me.... Tell me....”
And she made him talk, and she came again. Vague, sweet, first hours they were, with their drawing pain. Was it well to wake in the night, with eyes darker than the darkness, peering into his soul? Her mother’s eyes—with all the glory and none of the shame! She had come another day and then the next, while time stood still with its mocking wait.
Not vaguely came a scene: “I will tell you of the desert,” and a part of his story followed, brief and hard.
“Ah! I would be a man,” she said. “I would never run. I would never hide.”
Mocking words from a tongue too sweet to mock! She had her mother’s spirit. And Adam groped in the gloom, to the glee of his devils of scorn. The grass by day and the grass by night felt the impress of his face. Then love—first real love of youth, and noble passion of man—blazed as the sun in his face. From that revelation all was clear in the bursting light of calamity.
* * * * *
Ruth was coming under the oaks. She liked the cool shade and hated the glare. She was nineteen, with a woman’s form and her mother’s eyes—proud, sweet, aloof.