s crazy.

Getting on here, in my condition, was as hard as trench life. But now,
Carley--something has come to me out of the West. That, too, I am unable
to put into words. Maybe I can give you an inkling of it. I'm strong
enough to chop wood all day. No man or woman passes my cabin in a month.
But I am never lonely. I love these vast red canyon walls towering above
me. And the silence is so sweet. Think of the hellish din that filled my
ears. Even now--sometimes, the brook here changes its babbling murmur
to the roar of war. I never understood anything of the meaning of nature
until I lived under these looming stone walls and whispering pines.

So, Carley, try to understand me, or at least be kind. You know they
came very near writing, "Gone west!" after my name, and considering
that, this "Out West" signifies for me a very fortunate difference. A
tremendous difference! For the present I'll let well enough alone.

Adios. Write soon. Love from

GLEN

Carley's second reaction to the letter was a sudden upflashing desire
to see her lover--to go out West and find him. Impulses with her were
rather rare and inhibited, but this one made her tremble. If Glenn was
well again he must have vastly changed from the moody, stone-faced,
and haunted-eyed man who had so worried and distressed her. He had
embarrassed her, too, for sometimes, in her home, meeting young men
there who had not gone into the service, he had seemed to retreat into
himself, singularly aloof, as if his world was not theirs.

Again, with eager eyes and quivering lips, she read the letter. It
contained words that lifted her heart. Her starved love greedily
absorbed them. In them she had excuse for any resolve that might bring
Glenn closer to her. And she pondered over this longing to go to him.

Carley had the means to come and go and live as she liked. She did not
remember her father, who had died when she was a child. Her mother had
left her in the care of a sister, and before the war they had divided
their time between New York and Europe, the Adirondacks and Florida,
Carley had gone in for Red Cross and relief work with more of sincerity
than most of her set. But she was really not used to making any decision
as definite and important as that of going out West alone. She had never
been farther west than Jersey City; and her conception of the West was
a hazy one of vast plains and rough mountains, squalid towns, cattle
herds, and uncouth ill-clad men