he perplexing upward slant of her violet eyes, bizarre, oriental;
her white forehead made three cornered by her plaits of gold hair; the
mystery of the Other; her death at the moment of her child's birth.
It was in Vanamee's flight into the wilderness; the story of the Long
Trail, the sunsets behind the altar-like mesas, the baking desolation of
the deserts; the strenuous, fierce life of forgotten towns, down there,
far off, lost below the horizons of the southwest; the sonorous music of
unfamiliar names--Quijotoa, Uintah, Sonora, Laredo, Uncompahgre. It
was in the Mission, with its cracked bells, its decaying walls, its
venerable sun dial, its fountain and old garden, and in the Mission
Fathers themselves, the priests, the padres, planting the first wheat
and oil and wine to produce the elements of the Sacrament--a trinity of
great industries, taking their rise in a religious rite.

Abruptly, as if in confirmation, Presley heard the sound of a bell from
the direction of the Mission itself. It was the de Profundis, a note
of the Old World; of the ancient regime, an echo from the hillsides
of mediaeval Europe, sounding there in this new land, unfamiliar and
strange at this end-of-the-century time.

By now, however, it was dark. Presley hurried forward. He came to the
line fence of the Quien Sabe ranch. Everything was very still. The stars
were all out. There was not a sound other than the de Profundis, still
sounding from very far away. At long intervals the great earth sighed
dreamily in its sleep. All about, the feeling of absolute peace
and quiet and security and untroubled happiness and content seemed
descending from the stars like a benediction. The beauty of his poem,
its idyl, came to him like a caress; that alone had been lacking. It was
that, perhaps, which had left it hitherto incomplete. At last he was
to grasp his song in all its entity. But suddenly there was an
interruption. Presley had climbed the fence at the limit of the
Quien Sabe ranch. Beyond was Los Muertos, but between the two ran the
railroad. He had only time to jump back upon the embankment when, with
a quivering of all the earth, a locomotive, single, unattached, shot
by him with a roar, filling the air with the reek of hot oil, vomiting
smoke and sparks; its enormous eye, cyclopean, red, throwing a glare far
in advance, shooting by in a sudden crash of confused thunder; filling
the night with the terrific clamour of its iron hoofs.

Abruptly