atures just discernible in the
waning light as she sat motionless and erect on her horse, gazing at
him in silence and evidently as much surprised as he was by their sudden
encounter. Then with a smile and a nod of the head by way of
acknowledgment, she lifted her reins and spurred past him; disappearing
in the gathering darkness on the trail below them. Her unexpected
appearance and grace and type of beauty, so different from that of the
woman who occupied his thoughts, thrilled him for the moment as he
listened to the soft, muffled hoof-beats of her horse which grew fainter
and fainter until all was silence, save for the sighing of the wind
among the _mesquit_ and _manzanita_ bushes that grew about them. All
trace of her was gone. She had vanished into the night as swiftly as she
had come.

Then a strange thing happened. Something suddenly gripped his heart;
that indefinable something after which he had been groping and which had
been knocking so persistently at the portals of his inmost being, but
which until now had eluded him. The sight of that strange woman had
shown him that, to be beautiful is to be free and natural. That the
world he knew and revered was purely an artificial world of man's
invention, transitory and a thing apart from the universal life in the
midst of which he had been placed and apart from which it was impossible
for him to develop naturally. That nature is more perfect than all the
artificialities of civilization and a more efficient environment for the
normal development of man. That man's happiness and true relationship to
the universe were attainable only through direct contact and communion
with this life whose creations are the only great and lasting
realities. Thus only was it possible for him to quicken and vitalize
his powers to their fullest. That when creation finished its task, peace
and harmony reigned in the midst of the terrestrial garden, rendering
man's pursuit of happiness through diverse acts and infinite forms of
diversion quite unnecessary.

He had discovered the wild man's secret--why the stars still sing to him
as of yore--why the winds and the waters, the animals and the rocks and
the trees still speak to him in harmonies long since forgotten by
civilized man. A great and secret joy, such as he had never before
experienced, filled his soul; uplifting, consuming and mastering him....
But what would Blanch Lennox say? She with whose inner life he felt in
perfect accord?