[alde-devel] ul. It gra

[Lachino <sat...@va...>]

Ion were loosened again. And she writhed in her misery. Some one knocked
on her door. The Mexican woman called anxiously. Carley awoke to the
fact that her presence was not solitary on the physical earth, even if
her soul seemed stricken to eternal loneliness. Even in the desert there
was a world to consider. Vanity that had bled to death, pride that had
been crushed, availed her not here. But something else came to her
support. The lesson of the West had been to endure, not to shirk--to
face an issue, not to hide. Carley got up, bathed, dressed, brushed and
arranged her dishevelled hair. The face she saw in the mirror excited
her amaze and pity. Then she went out in answer to the call for dinner.
But she could not eat. The ordinary functions of life appeared to be
deadened. The day happened to be Sunday, and therefore the workmen were
absent. Carley had the place to herself. How the half-completed house
mocked her! She could not bear to look at it. What use could she make of
it now? Flo Hutter had become the working comrade of Glenn Kilbourne,
the mistress of his cabin. She was his wife and she would be the mother
of his children. That thought gave birth to the darkest hour of Carley
Burch's life. She became possessed as by a thousand devils. She became
merely a female robbed of her mate. Reason was not in her, nor charity,
nor justice. All that was abnormal in human nature seemed coalesced in
her, dominant, passionate, savage, terrible. She hated with an
incredible and insane ferocity. In the seclusion of her tent, crouched
on her bed, silent, locked, motionless, she ye