She who was his ideal, the inspiration of his eager
youth and well-spring of his ambitions of later years? The woman who
always met his problems with quick sympathy and comprehending interest?
Could she understand him now, sympathize with his new views of life? He
knew a battle royal would ensue between them, but felt confident of his
power to convince her. He found, however, upon his return to Newport
where she awaited him, that he had reckoned without his host. She
attributed his enthusiasm and changed convictions to his ardent love of
nature and the roving spirit that animated him, but could not be
convinced that the world of society in which she moved and shone and for
whose adulation she lived, was the lesser world. She refused to
relinquish their present life so full of the things of this world, the
only realities which she knew or recognized, for some vague
uncertainty. Surely the _wanderlust_, the love of the primitive, had
gotten into his blood!

At first she laughed scornfully, then hysterically.

"Was he mad to suggest such folly--imagine that she could even dream of
participating in such a life? He might give up the ambition of a
lifetime, fling aside a brilliant career to follow the path of his mad
fancy if he chose, but she would not be a partner to his folly!"

Again he noted her set lips and the pallor that succeeded the flush on
her cheeks after her first furious outburst. Again he saw her as she
rose, pale and trembling, her eyes blazing.

"And you dare come to me with this after all the years I have waited for
you? Go back to your deserts--your wild woman and her land of savages!"
she had cried in a voice of suppressed indignation and contempt. After
all he could not blame her, knowing as he did the world in which she had
been reared. She was right. And yet, as he sat there in the desert with
his back to the cliff and smoked in silence, living over again the
poignant memories of the past, the bitterness he experienced at the
moment was even keener than on that memorable night when they had
parted.

Could he ever forget her? The memory of that night clung to him in spite
of every effort to banish it from his mind.

Above them shone the stars, golden as the apples of Hesperides. He heard
again the rhythmic sound of the sea and the plashing of the fountain
near at hand, and noted the rose petals which the breeze had shaken from
the bushes to the path where they stood; filling the soft night air
w