le drudge, hurrying from one task to
another--as if it mattered! And now her power to think seemed converted
into a power of sustained sensation. She could become a mere receptacle
for heat, or become a color, like the bright lizards that darted about
on the hot stones outside her door; or she could become a continuous
repetition of sound, like the cicadas.

III

THE faculty of observation was never highly developed in Thea Kronborg.
A great deal escaped her eye as she passed through the world. But the
things which were for her, she saw; she experienced them physically and
remembered them as if they had once been a part of herself. The roses
she used to see in the florists' shops in Chicago were merely roses. But
when she thought of the moonflowers that grew over Mrs. Tellamantez's
door, it was as if she had been that vine and had opened up in white
flowers every night. There were memories of light on the sand hills, of
masses of prickly-pear blossoms she had found in the desert in early
childhood, of the late afternoon sun pouring through the grape leaves
and the mint bed in Mrs. Kohler's garden, which she would never lose.
These recollections were a part of her mind and personality. In Chicago
she had got almost nothing that went into her subconscious self and took
root there. But here, in Panther Canyon, there were again things which
seemed destined for her.

Panther Canyon was the home of innumerable swallows. They built nests in
the wall far above the hollow groove in which Thea's own rock chamber
lay. They seldom ventured above the rim of the canyon, to the flat,
wind-swept tableland. Their world was the blue air-river between the
canyon walls. In that blue gulf the arrow-shaped birds swam all day
long, with only an occasional movement of the wings. The only sad thing
about them was their timidity; the way in which they lived their lives
between the echoing cliffs and never dared to rise out of the shadow of
the canyon walls. As they swam past her door, Thea often felt how easy
it would be to dream one's life out in some cleft in the world.

From the ancient dwelling there came always a dignified, unobtrusive
sadness; now stronger, now fainter,--like the aromatic smell which the
dwarf cedars gave out in the sun,--but always present, a part of the air
one breathed. At night, when Thea dreamed about the canyon,--or in the
early morning when she hurried toward it, anticipating it,--her
conception of it was