My old job was not open to me, even if I had been able to work.  The government that I fought for left me to starve, or to die of my maladies like a dog, for all it cared.

I could not live on your money, Carley.  My people are poor, as you know.  So there was nothing for me to do but to borrow a little money from my friends and to come West.  I’m glad I had the courage to come.  What this West is I’ll never try to tell you, because, loving the luxury and excitement and glitter of the city as you do, you’d think I was crazy.

Getting on here, in my condition, was as hard as trench life.  But now, Carley—­something has come to me out of the West.  That, too, I am unable to put into words.  Maybe I can give you an inkling of it.  I’m strong enough to chop wood all day.  No man or woman passes my cabin in a month.  But I am never lonely.  I love these vast red canyon walls towering above me.  And the silence is so sweet.  Think of the hellish din that filled my ears.  Even now—­sometimes, the brook here changes its babbling murmur to the roar of war.  I never understood anything of the meaning of nature until I lived under these looming stone walls and whispering pines.

So, Carley, try to understand me, or at least be kind.  You know they came very near writing, “Gone west!” after my name, and considering that, this “Out West” signifies for me a very fortunate difference.  A tremendous difference!  For the present I’ll let well enough alone.

Adios.  Write soon.  Love from

GLEN

Carley’s second reaction to the letter was a sudden upflashing desire to see her lover—­to go out West and find him.  Impulses with her were rather rare and inhibited, but this one made her tremble.  If Glenn was well again he must have vastly changed from the moody, stone-faced, and haunted-eyed man who had so worried and distressed her.  He had embarrassed her, too, for sometimes, in her home, meeting young men there who had not gone into the service, he had seemed to retreat into himself, singularly aloof, as if his world was not theirs.

Again, with eager eyes and quivering lips, she read the letter.  It contained words that lifted her heart.  Her starved love greedily absorbed them.  In them she had excuse for any resolve that might bring Glenn closer to her.  And she pondered over this longing to go to him.

Carley had the means to come and go and live as she liked.  She did not remember her father, who had died when she was a child.  Her mother had left her in the care of a sister, and before the war they had divided their time between New York and Europe, the Adirondacks and Florida, Carley had gone in for Red Cross and relief work with more of sincerity than most of her set.  But she was really not used to making any decision as definite and important as that of going out West alone.  She had never been farther west than Jersey City; and her conception of the West was a hazy one of vast plains and rough mountains, squalid towns, cattle herds, and uncouth ill-clad men.