“I would.  You’re certainly wasting your time here.”

“But I could only go for a visit,” rejoined Carley, thoughtfully.  “A month, perhaps six weeks, if I could stand it.”

“Seems to me if you can stand New York you could stand that place,” said Aunt Mary, dryly.

“The idea of staying away from New York any length of time—­why, I couldn’t do it I . . .  But I can stay out there long enough to bring Glenn back with me.”

“That may take you longer than you think,” replied her aunt, with a gleam in her shrewd eyes.  “If you want my advice you will surprise Glenn.  Don’t write him—­don’t give him a chance to—­well to suggest courteously that you’d better not come just yet.  I don’t like his words ‘just yet.’”

“Auntie, you’re—­rather—­more than blunt,” said Carley, divided between resentment and amaze.  “Glenn would be simply wild to have me come.”

“Maybe he would.  Has he ever asked you?”

“No-o—­come to think of it, he hasn’t,” replied Carley, reluctantly.  “Aunt Mary, you hurt my feelings.”

“Well, child, I’m glad to learn your feelings are hurt,” returned the aunt.  “I’m sure, Carley, that underneath all this—­this blase ultra something you’ve acquired, there’s a real heart.  Only you must hurry and listen to it—­or—­”

“Or what?” queried Carley.

Aunt Mary shook her gray head sagely.  “Never mind what.  Carley, I’d like your idea of the most significant thing in Glenn’s letter.”

“Why, his love for me, of course!” replied Carley.

“Naturally you think that.  But I don’t.  What struck me most were his words, ‘out of the West.’  Carley, you’d do well to ponder over them.”

“I will,” rejoined Carley, positively.  “I’ll do more.  I’ll go out to his wonderful West and see what he meant by them.”

Carley Burch possessed in full degree the prevailing modern craze for speed.  She loved a motor-car ride at sixty miles an hour along a smooth, straight road, or, better, on the level seashore of Ormond, where on moonlight nights the white blanched sand seemed to flash toward her.  Therefore quite to her taste was the Twentieth Century Limited which was hurtling her on the way to Chicago.  The unceasingly smooth and even rush of the train satisfied something in her.  An old lady sitting in an adjoining seat with a companion amused Carley by the remark:  “I wish we didn’t go so fast.  People nowadays haven’t time to draw a comfortable breath.  Suppose we should run off the track!”

Carley had no fear of express trains, or motor cars, or transatlantic liners; in fact, she prided herself in not being afraid of anything.  But she wondered if this was not the false courage of association with a crowd.  Before this enterprise at hand she could not remember anything she had undertaken alone.  Her thrills seemed to be in abeyance to the end of her journey.  That night her sleep was permeated with the steady low whirring of the wheels.  Once, roused by a jerk, she lay awake in the darkness while the thought came to her that she and all her fellow passengers were really at the mercy of the engineer.  Who was he, and did he stand at his throttle keen and vigilant, thinking of the lives intrusted to him?  Such thoughts vaguely annoyed Carley, and she dismissed them.