Then Adam, on his knees by the brown running stream, in the midst of his ablutions, halted to stare at the sunrise. Had it ever before been so strangely beautiful? During his sleep the earth had revolved, and, lo! here was the sun again. Wonderful and perennial truth! Not only had it revolved, but it had gone on its mysterious journey, hurtling through space with inconceivable rapidity. While he slept! Again he had awakened. A thousand years ago he had awakened just like this, so it seemed, to the sunrise, to the loneliness of lonely places, to the beauty of nature, to the joy of life. He sensed some past state, which, when he thought about it, faded back illusively and was gone. But he knew he had lived somewhere before this. All of life was in him. The marvelous spirit he felt now would never die. * * * * * There dawned upon Adam a sudden consciousness of Genie’s beauty. She was the last realized and the most beautiful creation of the desert around him. It came to him as a great surprise. She, too, knelt at the stream, splashing the cool water, bathing her face, wetting the dark, gold-tinted locks and brushing them back. Curiously and absorbingly Adam gazed at her, with eyes from which some blinding shutter had fallen. Yes, she was beautiful. It seemed a simple fact that he had overlooked, yet it was amazing. It distracted him. “Wanny, you’re all eyes,” cried Genie, gayly. “What’s the matter with me? Why do you look so?” “Genie, you’re growing up,” he replied, soberly. “Well, you’d have known that before if you’d seen me sewing,” she said. “How old are you?” he asked. “Guess I’m nearly seventeen,” she said, and the words brought back the dreams. “Why, you’re a young lady!” ejaculated Adam. “And--and----” He had been about to add that she was beautiful, but he held his tongue. “I guess that, too.... Hold out your arm.” Adam complied, and was further amazed to see, as she walked under his outstretched arm, that the glossy, wavy crown of her head almost touched it. She was as tall and slim and graceful as an arrowweed. “There! I’ll have you know you’re a mighty big man,” she said. “And if you weren’t so big I’d come clear up to your shoulder.” “Genie, don’t you want to leave this desert?” he queried, bluntly. “Oh no,” she replied, instantly. “I love it. And--and--please don’t make me think of towns, of lots of people. I want to run wild like a road runner. I’d be perfectly happy if I didn’t have to spend half the day mending these old clothes.... Wanny, if they get any worse they’ll fall off me--and _then_ I’ll have to run around like you saw me yesterday!... Oh, but for the thorns, that’d be grand!” Her light, rippling laugh rang out, sweet and gay. Adam waited for her later, in the shade of Taquitch Canyon, where from the topmost of a jumble of bowlders he watched a distant waterfall, white and green as it flashed over a dark cliff.