“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. “Desert man, I am lonesome,” she said. “My grandfather has gone again. He is chasing some new will-o’-the-wisp. Gold and mines, cattle and land--and now it’s water. He has an ear for every man.” “Lonesome? You! What do you know of loneliness?” asked Adam. “There’s a loneliness of soul.” “Ah! but you are young. Go help Genie plan her home.” “Genie and Gene! Two people with but one voice! They cannot hear or see anyone but themselves. It’s a pity to invade their paradise. _I_ will not.... And, oh, how beautiful the world must be to them!” “Ruth, is it not so to you?” “Beautiful lands and greens and waters!” she exclaimed, in restless discontent. “But I cannot live on scenery. There is joy here, but none for me.... I lost my mother and I can’t forget. She _had_ to leave me and go with him--my father. My father who loved me as a child and hated me as a girl. Oh, it’s all a mystery! She went with him to the desert. Gold mad--she said he was. She had her debt to pay. And _I_ could not be taken to Death Valley.” “You have never heard from her since the parting?” “Never.... And I am a woman now. Some day I will go to Death Valley.” “Why?” he asked. “Because _they_ went there.” “But no one lives long in that valley of death.” “Then I will find their graves,” she said. “Ruth, you must not. What good can come of your traveling there? I’ve told you of its desolate and forbidding nature. You are all wrong. Wait! Perhaps your mother will--perhaps you will hear of her some day.” “Oh, desert man, I was a child when we parted. I’m a woman now. I want to _know_. The mystery haunts me. _She_ loved me--ah, so well!... Sometimes I cannot bear to live. My grandfather hides me in lonely places. We meet but few people, and those he repels. It is because of _me_.... Desert man, I am lonelier than was Genie. She is like a bird. She must have lived on the sun and the winds. But _I_ am no child, and _I_ am forlorn.” Brooding purple eyes of trouble, of longing, of discontent, of fire for life! The heart and soul of Ruth Virey--the heritage of need and unrest--shone from her eyes. All unconsciously she longed to be loved. She stood on the threshold of womanhood like a leaf in a storm.