Big and red the moon that is only a little past full pushes over the hill. The desire to taste the night, to drown my tumult in its peace seizes me. Out on the hilltop, alone face to face with the night, and unafraid, I am indeed swept from my moorings. There to the east, where the skyline is so sharply irregular, just where Camel Back marches eternally on the horizon, he makes me think of a city I have never seen. I want to use his back as a stepping stone to the moon and look down on a play I have just been reading about. When the curtain lifts I want to see those real camels marching past, their background a sunrise in the desert. The mountains I love, my beautiful, misty mountains, are a giant wall of earth to-night. I want to get over the wall. I want to sit in that theatre, and after the play I want to be swept along in the street with the surging crowd and go into a gorgeous, glittery place and eat delicious things I have never tasted, wearing the sort of dress I have never seen. I want to live. If but for one hour of life I want my youth. I could be part of that pulsing, beating life, part of that splendid friction—man’s mind stimulating man’s mind. Back in my room, ready for bed, the light blown out, sitting at the window, I acknowledge to myself that the cause of all the day’s emotional upheaval has been Dicky’s letter. Dicky’s letter that reads: “In my brave attire I went to meet the hero of my ‘Personal.’ He got cold feet, Caroline. He did not come. He sent a messenger boy. I had written my foolish heart out to him. I had told him the things I tell you. Yes, I know it is reckless to write like that to a man one never saw. Try being a prune and a potato and a slice of bread, though, before you condemn me. “His letter is the dearest ever, Caroline. I have read it over and over. ‘Little gypsy child of nineteen, will you be just a little disappointed that the messenger boy is there and not I? Will you believe that I am going against my desire when I stay away? It isn’t fair to you that I meet you. It is not fair to the nice little girl homesick for her southland who has never as yet spoken to a man to whom she has not been introduced. The “ad” was just a wager between a man and me. My name will mean nothing to you, but I sign it.’