, and poverty, and
suffering, and now lost by reason of comforts and health, shall shed one
tear of suffering!"

But sometimes, worn out by watching, I, too, must lie down. Again, in
her sleep, I felt her arm rest upon my neck. Now, God give me what He
listeth, but may not this thing come to me again.

For now, day by day, night by night, against all my will and wish,
against all my mind and resolution, I knew that I was loving this new
being with all my heart and all my soul, forsaking all others, and that
this would be until death should us part. I knew that neither here nor
elsewhere in the world was anything which could make me whole of
this--no principles of duty or honor, no wish nor inclination nor
resolve!

I had eaten. I loved. I saw what life is.

I saw the great deceit of Nature. I saw her plan, her wish, her
merciless, pitiless desire; and seeing this, I smiled slowly in the dark
at the mockery of what we call civilization, its fuss and flurry, its
pretense, its misery. Indeed, we are small, but life is not small. We
are small, but love is very large and strong, born as it is of the great
necessity that man shall not forget the world, that woman shall not rob
the race.

For myself, I accepted my station in this plan, saying nothing beyond my
own soul. None the less, I said there to my own soul, that this must be
now, till death should come to part us twain.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE GARDEN

Soon now we would be able to travel; but whither, and for what purpose?
I began to shrink from the thought of change. This wild world was enough
for me. So long as we might eat and sleep thus, and so long as I might
not lose sight of her, it seemed to me I could not anywhere gain in
happiness and content. Elsewhere I must lose both.

None the less we must travel. We had been absent now from civilization
some three weeks, and must have been given up long since. Our party must
have passed far to the westward, and by this time our story was known at
Laramie and elsewhere. Parties were no doubt in search of us at that
time. But where should these search in that wilderness of the unknown
Plains. How should it be known that we were almost within touch of the
great highway of the West, now again thronging with wagon trains? By
force of these strange circumstances which I have related we were
utterly gone, blotted out; our old world no longer existed for us, nor
we for it.

As I argued to myself again and again, th