in the air. "You
are the sort that used to run wild in Germany, dressed in their hair and
a piece of skin. Soldiers caught 'em in nets. Old Nathanmeyer," he
mused, "would like a peep at her now. Knowing old fellow. Always buying
those Zorn etchings of peasant girls bathing. No sag in them either.
Must be the cold climate." He sat up. "She'll begin to pitch rocks on me
if I don't move." In response to another impatient gesture from the
crag, he rose and began swinging slowly up the trail.

It was the afternoon of that long day. Thea was lying on a blanket in
the door of her rock house. She and Ottenburg had come back from their
climb and had lunch, and he had gone off for a nap in one of the
cliff-houses farther down the path. He was sleeping peacefully, his coat
under his head and his face turned toward the wall.

Thea, too, was drowsy, and lay looking through halfclosed eyes up at the
blazing blue arch over the rim of the canyon. She was thinking of
nothing at all. Her mind, like her body, was full of warmth, lassitude,
physical content. Suddenly an eagle, tawny and of great size, sailed
over the cleft in which she lay, across the arch of sky. He dropped for
a moment into the gulf between the walls, then wheeled, and mounted
until his plumage was so steeped in light that he looked like a golden
bird. He swept on, following the course of the canyon a little way and
then disappearing beyond the rim. Thea sprang to her feet as if she had
been thrown up from the rock by volcanic action. She stood rigid on the
edge of the stone shelf, straining her eyes after that strong, tawny
flight. O eagle of eagles! Endeavor, achievement, desire, glorious
striving of human art! From a cleft in the heart of the world she
saluted it...It had come all the way; when men lived in caves, it was
there. A vanished race; but along the trails, in the stream, under the
spreading cactus, there still glittered in the sun the bits of their
frail clay vessels, fragments of their desire.

VII

FROM the day of Fred's arrival, he and Thea were unceasingly active.
They took long rides into the Navajo pine forests, bought turquoises and
silver bracelets from the wandering Indian herdsmen, and rode twenty
miles to Flagstaff upon the slightest pretext. Thea had never felt this
pleasant excitement about any man before, and she found herself trying
very hard to please young Ottenburg. She was never tired, never dull.
There was a zest about waking