Some day, when grief and horror shall be abandoned by man as utterly as his dreams of cave-life; when his remembrances of wrestling with the forces of nature or commerce shall seem as remote as his warfare with beasts, and tribes as savage as beasts; when he lifts his dull eyes and dares to dream only joy and beauty, then he will know that the gray cries of the wind are but the emphasis to the singing of the sunlight, that the black storm-clouds are but the contrast Beauty offers to deepen and heighten the effect of her more ethereal hues, blue and rose and pearl.

Hanson had stood the storm badly; inactivity was always a hardship to him, also he was unused to such discomfort as he had to endure; and his depression and unrest induced by the suspense he suffered in continually wondering how Pearl would take Bob Flick’s news were greatly increased by the fact that he could get no word to her, nor receive any from her.

But on the third night the storm stilled and in the morning the desert showed herself sparkling like an enchantress, exhibiting all of her marvelous illusions of color and wrapped in a golden garment of sunshine.  She smiled with all the allurement of a radiant and beautiful woman.

Early in the morning, just as Hanson was preparing to send a note to Pearl, he received one from her, asking him to meet her again within an hour or two, amid the palms.  She did not suggest his riding thither with her.  The note was brief, a mere line, and, study it as he would, he found nothing in it to indicate what her attitude was toward him, therefore it did not allay his nervousness in the least as to how she would meet him.  But with the passage of the storm his nerves had recovered their normal tone, and with the brilliance and freshness of the morning much of his optimism had returned.

He reached the approach to the foothills where the palms lifted their stately and magnificent height, long before Pearl, and there, walking restlessly back and forth, he watched the road with straining eyes.  And then he saw her, at first a mere speck in the distance; then she became more and more distinct, for she rode fast.  She waved her hand to him as she came nearer and his heart rose in a great bound.  Slackening the speed of her horse, she leaped from the saddle while it was still going, ran by its side, throwing the bridle over her arm, stopped, laughing and breathless, and cast herself into Hanson’s waiting arms.

“Pearl, Pearl,” he cried, in a low voice, holding her close against him and kissing her upturned face again and again.  “Oh, Pearl, it’s been a thousand years in hell since I saw you last.”

She laughed and, gazing eagerly into her care-free eyes and unreproachful face, his heart rose again in a great sigh of relief.  “That’s the way a tenderfoot always feels about a sand-storm,” she said.  “Well, we sure gave you some nice theatrical effects, didn’t we?  It’s the biggest I’ve seen for many a long day.  But you were bound to see something like that before you went away.”  She spoke with a fatalism approaching Bob Flick’s.  “The desert never lets you go and forget her.”  Her eyes dreamed a moment.