“I don’t mean the regular Lord’s Bible.  It’s a book he’s been writing for years and he always turns to it when he’s in trouble.  I don’t know nothing about it.  What he don’t want me to know, I don’t know,” and Jonas slammed the door behind him.

It was late when Enoch suddenly straightened himself up and, with an air of resolution, opened the black book.  He uncapped his fountain pen and wrote: 

“Diana, how could I know, how could I dream that such a thing could happen to you, through me!  You must never come back to Washington.  Perhaps they will forget.  As for myself, I can’t seem to think clearly just what I must do.  I am so very tired.  One thing is certain, you never must see me again.  For one wild moment the desire to return to the Canyon, now I am in its neighborhood overwhelmed me.  I decided to go up there and see if I could find the peace that I found in my boyhood.  Then I realized that you were at home, that all the world would see me go down Bright Angel, and I gave up the idea.  But somehow, I must find rest, before I return to Washington.  Oh, Diana, Diana!”

It was midnight when Enoch finally lay down in his berth.  To Jonas’ delight, he fell asleep almost immediately, and the faithful steward, after reporting to the anxious group on the platform, was soon asleep himself.

But it was not one o’clock when the Secretary awoke.  The train was rumbling slowly, and he looked from the window.  Only the moonlit flats of the desert were to be seen.  Enoch rose with sudden energy and dressed himself.  He chucked his toilet case, with his diary and a change of underwear, into a satchel, and scrawled a note to Abbott: 

“Dear Charley:  I’m slipping off into the desert for a little rest.  You’ll hear from me when I feel better.  Give out that I’m sick—­I am—­and cancel the few speaking engagements left.  Tell Jonas he is not to worry.  Yours, E. H.”

He sealed this note, then he pulled on a soft hat and, as the train stopped at a water tank, he slipped off the platform and stood in the shadow of an old shed.  It seemed to him a long time before the engine, with violent puffing and jolting, started the long train on again.  But finally the tail lights disappeared in the distance and Enoch was alone in the desert.  For a few moments he stood beside the track, drawing in deep breaths of the warm night air.  Then he started slowly westward along the railway tracks.  He had noted a cluster of adobe houses a mile or so back, and toward these he was headed.  In spite of the agony of the blow he had sustained Enoch, gazing from the silver flood of the desert, to the silver arch of the heavens, was conscious of a thrill of excitement and not unpleasant anticipation.  Somewhere, somehow, in the desert, he would find peace and sufficient spiritual strength to sustain him when once more he faced Washington and the world.

BOOK III