A long half-day wait in Chicago was a tedious preliminary to the second part of her journey.  But at last she found herself aboard the California Limited, and went to bed with a relief quite a stranger to her.  The glare of the sun under the curtain awakened her.  Propped up on her pillows, she looked out at apparently endless green fields or pastures, dotted now and then with little farmhouses and tree-skirted villages.  This country, she thought, must be the prairie land she remembered lay west of the Mississippi.

Later, in the dining car, the steward smilingly answered her question:  “This is Kansas, and those green fields out there are the wheat that feeds the nation.”

Carley was not impressed.  The color of the short wheat appeared soft and rich, and the boundless fields stretched away monotonously.  She had not known there was so much flat land in the world, and she imagined it might be a fine country for automobile roads.  When she got back to her seat she drew the blinds down and read her magazines.  Then tiring of that, she went back to the observation car.  Carley was accustomed to attracting attention, and did not resent it, unless she was annoyed.  The train evidently had a full complement of passengers, who, as far as Carley could see, were people not of her station in life.  The glare from the many windows, and the rather crass interest of several men, drove her back to her own section.  There she discovered that some one had drawn up her window shades.  Carley promptly pulled them down and settled herself comfortably.  Then she heard a woman speak, not particularly low:  “I thought people traveled west to see the country.”  And a man replied, rather dryly.  “Wal, not always.”  His companion went on:  “If that girl was mine I’d let down her skirt.”  The man laughed and replied:  “Martha, you’re shore behind the times.  Look at the pictures in the magazines.”

Such remarks amused Carley, and later she took advantage of an opportunity to notice her neighbors.  They appeared a rather quaint old couple, reminding her of the natives of country towns in the Adirondacks.  She was not amused, however, when another of her woman neighbors, speaking low, referred to her as a “lunger.”  Carley appreciated the fact that she was pale, but she assured herself that there ended any possible resemblance she might have to a consumptive.  And she was somewhat pleased to hear this woman’s male companion forcibly voice her own convictions.  In fact, he was nothing if not admiring.

Kansas was interminably long to Carley, and she went to sleep before riding out of it.  Next morning she found herself looking out at the rough gray and black land of New Mexico.  She searched the horizon for mountains, but there did not appear to be any.  She received a vague, slow-dawning impression that was hard to define.  She did not like the country, though that was not the impression which eluded her.  Bare gray flats, low scrub-fringed hills, bleak cliffs,