Next day he took her out again, and thereafter every morning and every afternoon, relentless in his determination, though his cruelty wrung his heart. Gentle and kind as he was, he yet saw that she fell into the stream, that she pricked her bare feet on cactus, that she grew frightened on the steep slopes, that she walked farther and harder every day. Nature was as relentless as Adam. Soon Genie’s insensibility to pain and hunger was as if it had never been. Whenever she pricked or bruised the poor little feet Adam always claimed it an accident; and whenever her starved little body cried out in hunger he fed her. Thus by action, and the forcing of her senses, which were involuntary, he turned her mind from her black despair. This took days and weeks. Many and many a time Adam’s heart misgave him, but just as often something else in him remained implacable. He had seen the training of Indian children. He knew how the mother fox always threw from her litter the black cub that was repugnant to her. The poor little black offspring was an outcast. He was soon weaned, and kicked out of the nest to die or survive. But if he did survive the cruel, harsh bitterness of strife and heat and thirst and starvation--his contact with his environment--he would grow superior to all the carefully mothered and nourished cubs. Adam expected this singular law of nature, as regarded action and contact and suffering, to be Genie’s salvation, provided it did not kill her; and if she had to die he considered it better for her to die of travail, of effort beyond her strength, than of a miserable pining away. One morning, as he finished his camp tasks, he missed her. Upon searching, he found her flat on the grassy bank of the stream, face downward, with her thin brown feet in the air. He wondered what she could be doing, and his heart sank, for she had often said it would be so easy and sweet to lie down and sleep in the water. “Genie, child, what are you doing?” he asked. “Look! the bees--the honey bees! They’re washing themselves in the water. First I thought they were drinking. But no!... They’re washing. It’s so funny.” When she looked up, Adam thrilled at sight of her eyes. If they had always been beautiful in shape and color, what were they now, with youth returned, and a light of the birth of wonder and joy in life? Youth had won over tragedy. Nature hid deep at the heart of all creation. The moment also had a birth for Adam--an exquisite birth of the first really happy moment of his long desert years.