hills, and let
the winds blow me where they will. I should not be at all surprised to
awaken some morning and find that I had become one of the tall reeds
that sway to and fro along the banks of our mountain stream.

"In one of my brief periods of returning civilisation, just after
receiving a terrible letter from Terry, I had myself weighed at the
store and post-office of the town not far away from our camp; my weight
was exactly eighty pounds! It seemed to me that I was fading away into
something wild and strange. But I have never felt such physical and
mental well-being since I can remember. I hardly need to eat, but our
camp cook actually forces me to swallow something. He is a German
'radical' of the old school. Frightfully tired of the radical bunch as I
am, I like this simple old man. He is like a part of Nature, has lived
on her bosom all his life, and loves her and no other. We have visitors
at our camp occasionally, and they bring things to eat and drink. When
they are gone, the cook and I live on what is left and get along as best
we may. There are lots of wild fruits and nuts growing about here and
they are delicious. Neither of us has any money nor care for the morrow.

"After I arrived here, all the bitterness of life vanished. I thought
and felt very beautifully of Terry, and always shall, for I have made an
ideal of him, and his grand, noble head, like a blazing tiger-lily
perched upon a delicate and slender stem, will always be for me the
greatest, most wonderful recollection of all the years. But I have no
longer any desire to be with him, yet I do love and adore him, my own
wonderful, sweet, great Terry!"

To Terry she wrote: "I am intoxicated by all this beauty and love the
very air and earth. I feel the ecstasy of the aesthetic fanatic. Were I
not disturbed by thoughts of you, I would indeed become another Eve
before the fall, though I have strange desires and my blood beats as in
the veins of married women. But no lovers can quench my fever. All the
tiresome males are far away and I feel new-born and free. The air is
scented with balsam and bey, and a pure crystal stream flows through
this valley between two hills covered with giant redwood trees, and rare
orchids of the most curious shape and colour toss wantonly in the breeze
on the tree and hilltops. Birds and fishes and reptiles disport
themselves in the sunshine, and giant butterflies of the most marvellous
colours flutter so bravely among