And suddenly, clearly, amazingly, Carley beheld in her mind’s sight the hard features, the bold eyes, the slight smile, the coarse face of Haze Ruff.  She had forgotten him.  But he now returned.  And with memory of him flashed a revelation as to his meaning in her life.  He had appeared merely a clout, a ruffian, an animal with man’s shape and intelligence.  But he was the embodiment of the raw, crude violence of the West.  He was the eyes of the natural primitive man, believing what he saw.  He had seen in Carley Burch the paraded charm, the unashamed and serene front, the woman seeking man.  Haze Ruff had been neither vile nor base nor unnatural.  It had been her subjection to the decadence of feminine dress that had been unnatural.  But Ruff had found her a lie.  She invited what she did not want.  And his scorn had been commensurate with the falsehood of her.  So might any man have been justified in his insult to her, in his rejection of her.  Haze Ruff had found her unfit for his idea of dalliance.  Virgil Rust had found her false to the ideals of womanhood for which he had sacrificed all but life itself.  What then had Glenn Kilbourne found her?  He possessed the greatness of noble love.  He had loved her before the dark and changeful tide of war had come between them.  How had he judged her?  That last sight of him standing alone, leaning with head bowed, a solitary figure trenchant with suggestion of tragic resignation and strength, returned to flay Carley.  He had loved, trusted, and hoped.  She saw now what his hope had been—­that she would have instilled into her blood the subtle, red, and revivifying essence of calling life in the open, the strength of the wives of earlier years, an emanation from canyon, desert, mountain, forest, of health, of spirit, of forward-gazing natural love, of the mysterious saving instinct he had gotten out of the West.  And she had been too little too steeped in the indulgence of luxurious life too slight-natured and pale-blooded!  And suddenly there pierced into the black storm of Carley’s mind a blazing, white-streaked thought—­she had left Glenn to the Western girl, Flo Hutter.  Humiliated, and abased in her own sight, Carley fell prey to a fury of jealousy.

She went back to the old life.  But it was in a bitter, restless, critical spirit, conscious of the fact that she could derive neither forgetfulness nor pleasure from it, nor see any release from the habit of years.

One afternoon, late in the fall, she motored out to a Long Island club where the last of the season’s golf was being enjoyed by some of her most intimate friends.  Carley did not play.  Aimlessly she walked around the grounds, finding the autumn colors subdued and drab, like her mind.  The air held a promise of early winter.  She thought that she would go South before the cold came.  Always trying to escape anything rigorous, hard, painful, or disagreeable!  Later she returned to the clubhouse to find her party assembled on an inclosed porch, chatting and partaking of refreshment.  Morrison was there.  He had not taken kindly to her late habit of denying herself to him.