Elijah made no reply. They drove on in silence toward his ranch where Mrs. MacGregor was to spend a few days. His thought wandered from his surroundings back to the clear sunlight, the bracing air of his old New England home. There was peace there; the peace of simple lives untouched by the fierce passions of the throbbing world. He saw Amy Eltharp, flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, walking through the cool woods, her hand in his own, her eyes down-cast, her cheeks delicately flushed, as her trembling lips breathed "yes" in answer to his passionate words. Now it was all gone. He was in a desert land, burned with conflicting emotions as fierce as the sun that beat upon the sands around him. When they reached the ranch, Amy was standing in the rose-trellised drive-way to welcome them. Fair as the roses that surrounded her, she stood with anxious eyes raised to Elijah. Her purpose to make herself useful to Elijah, was yet strong within her. Perhaps this fact tempered for her the chill of Elijah's absent-minded response to her greeting. She was feeding her heart on hope. "A little study, a little practice and the thing is done." CHAPTER FIFTEEN Amy Berl was demonstrating the world-old truth, that love, however selfish, ennobles and softens the life into which it enters. With feeble brain but loving heart, she was working out for herself the truth that love which feeds on sensuous beauty or sensuous passion alone, dies the death of the brute; that the love which is born not to die, must drink deeper and ever deeper with the passing years at the fountain of eternal youth; that to a love thus thirst-quenched, every gray hair that marks a day forever gone, every wrinkle on flesh shrivelling at the touch of time, eyes dimmed with the shedding of many tears, every footstep trembling with the passing of the weary milestones of life, are bonds which the fires of hell cannot melt, nor the peace of heaven dissolve away. Amy did not know it, she could not have grasped the fact had it been told her, that she was laying hold of the saving element of life, that animated as she had been by a love that was still seeking itself alone, she was yet nourishing a power that would raise her from the ashes of despair. Amy had not forgotten the task she had set herself. She had obtained "A & B's Elements," and day after day, she was striving to master the simple problems that would enable her to take Helen Lonsdale's place in her husband's life. The coming of Mrs. MacGregor had not interfered with her purpose, nor with her hours of study. Through the day, Mrs. MacGregor and Elijah were absent, inspecting the desolate stretches of red hillsides, or the struggling green of seeping springs in deep arroyos.