Then what she had expected and deliberately induced by her efforts quickly came to pass.  Just as the year before she had suffered excruciating pain from aching muscles, and saddle blisters, and walking blisters, and a very rending of her bones, so now she fell victim to them again.  In sunshine and rain she faced the desert.  Sunburn and sting of sleet were equally to be endured.  And that abomination, the hateful blinding sandstorm, did not daunt her.  But the weary hours of abnegation to this physical torture at least held one consoling recompense as compared with her experience of last year, and it was that there was no one interested to watch for her weaknesses and failures and blunders.  She could fight it out alone.

Three weeks of this self-imposed strenuous training wore by before Carley was free enough from weariness and pain to experience other sensations.  Her general health, evidently, had not been so good as when she had first visited Arizona.  She caught cold and suffered other ills attendant upon an abrupt change of climate and condition.  But doggedly she kept at her task.  She rode when she should have been in bed; she walked when she should have ridden; she climbed when she should have kept to level ground.  And finally by degrees so gradual as not to be noticed except in the sum of them she began to mend.

Meanwhile the construction of her house went on with uninterrupted rapidity.  When the low, slanting, wide-eaved roof was completed Carley lost further concern about rainstorms.  Let them come.  When the plumbing was all in and Carley saw verification of Hoyle’s assurance that it would mean a gravity supply of water ample and continual, she lost her last concern as to the practicability of the work.  That, and the earning of her endurance, seemed to bring closer a wonderful reward, still nameless and spiritual, that had been unattainable, but now breathed to her on the fragrant desert wind and in the brooding silence.

The time came when each afternoon’s ride or climb called to Carley with increasing delight.  But the fact that she must soon reveal to Glenn her presence and transformation did not seem to be all the cause.  She could ride without pain, walk without losing her breath, work without blistering her hands; and in this there was compensation.  The building of the house that was to become a home, the development of water resources and land that meant the making of a ranch—­these did not altogether constitute the anticipation of content.  To be active, to accomplish things, to recall to mind her knowledge of manual training, of domestic science, of designing and painting, to learn to cook—­these were indeed measures full of reward, but they were not all.  In her wondering, pondering meditation she arrived at the point where she tried to assign to her love the growing fullness of her life.  This, too, splendid and all-pervading as it was, she had to reject.  Some exceedingly illusive and vital significance of life had insidiously come to Carley.