“A girl has to find a husband, doesn’t she?” asked Carley, roused to defense of her sex.  “And if she’s anybody she has to find one in her set.  Well, husbands are not plentiful.  Marriage certainly is not the end of existence these days.  We have to get along somehow.  The high cost of living is no inconsderable factor today.  Do you know that most of the better-class apartment houses in New York will not take children?  Women are not all to blame.  Take the speed mania.  Men must have automobiles.  I know one girl who wanted a baby, but her husband wanted a car.  They couldn’t afford both.”

“Carley, I’m not blaming women more than men,” returned Glenn.  “I don’t know that I blame them as a class.  But in my own mind I have worked it all out.  Every man or woman who is genuinely American should read the signs of the times, realize the crisis, and meet it in an American way.  Otherwise we are done as a race.  Money is God in the older countries.  But it should never become God in America.  If it does we will make the fall of Rome pale into insignificance.”

“Glenn, let’s put off the argument,” appealed Carley.  “I’m not—­just up to fighting you today.  Oh—­you needn’t smile.  I’m not showing a yellow streak, as Flo puts it.  I’ll fight you some other time.”

“You’re right, Carley,” he assented.  “Here we are loafing six or seven miles from home.  Let’s rustle along.”

Riding fast with Glenn was something Carley had only of late added to her achievements.  She had greatest pride in it.  So she urged her mustang to keep pace with Glenn’s horse and gave herself up to the thrill of the motion and feel of wind and sense of flying along.  At a good swinging lope Calico covered ground swiftly and did not tire.  Carley rode the two miles to the rim of the canyon, keeping alongside of Glenn all the way.  Indeed, for one long level stretch she and Glenn held hands.  When they arrived at the descent, which necessitated slow and careful riding, she was hot and tingling and breathless, worked by the action into an exuberance of pleasure.  Glenn complimented her riding as well as her rosy cheeks.  There was indeed a sweetness in working at a task as she had worked to learn to ride in Western fashion.  Every turn of her mind seemed to confront her with sobering antitheses of thought.  Why had she come to love to ride down a lonely desert road, through ragged cedars where the wind whipped her face with fragrant wild breath, if at the same time she hated the West?  Could she hate a country, however barren and rough, if it had saved the health and happiness of her future husband?  Verily there were problems for Carley to solve.

Early twilight purple lay low in the hollows and clefts of the canyon.  Over the western rim a pale ghost of the evening star seemed to smile at Carley, to bid her look and look.  Like a strain of distant music, the dreamy hum of falling water, the murmur and melody of the stream, came again to Carley’s sensitive ear.