e would have chosen
desolation.

Instead, he was silent, his eyes not on her, but on the desert.

"You--swear you will let me live my own life?" she faltered.

"I swear I will let you live your own life."

He repeated her words, as he had repeated the words of the clergyman who
had, according to the law of God, given "this woman to this man."

The train was stopping.

Annesley knew that she could not go on alone.

"I will try--Texas," she said in final decision.

* * * * *

Las Cruces Ranch was named, not after the New Mexico town thirty or forty
miles away, but in honour of the Holy Crosses which had rested there one
night, centuries ago, while on a sacred pilgrimage.

It was a lonely ranch, as far from El Paso in Texas as it was from
the namesake town in New Mexico. Even the nearest village, a huddled
collection of low adobe houses and wooden shacks on the Rio Grande
("Furious River," as the Indians called it), was ten miles distant. Only
the river was near, as the word "near" is used in that land of vast
spaces. At night, if a great wind blew, Annesley fancied she could hear
the voice of the rushing water.

When she first saw the place where she had bound herself to live,
her heart sank. It seemed that she would not be able to support the
loneliness; for it would be desperately lonely to live there, lacking the
companionship of someone dearly loved. But afterward--afterward she could
no more analyze her feeling for the country than for the man who had
brought her to it.

Lonely as she was, she was never homesick. Indeed, she had no home to
long for, no one whose love called her back to the old world. And she was
glad that there were no neighbours to come, to call her "Mrs. Donaldson"
and ask questions about England.

She had nobody except the Mexican servant woman and the cowboys who
stayed with the new rancher when the old one went away.

Knight had suggested that she should wait in El Paso until he had seen
whether the house was habitable for her, and had made it so, if it were
not already. But Annesley had chosen to begin her new life without delay,
for she was in a mood where hardships seemed of no importance. It was
only when she had to face them in their sordid nakedness that she shrank.

Yet, after all, what did it matter? If she had stepped into the most
luxurious surroundings she would have been no less unhappy.

The low house was of adobe, plastered white, b