d seeing the dry ugliness of the long, straight
sticks placed close together, Annesley disliked and wondered at it. At
last she questioned Knight, and complained that the bristly barrier was
an eyesore. She wished it might be taken down.

"Wait till spring," he answered. "It isn't a barrier; it's an allegory.
Maybe when you see what happens you'll understand. Maybe you won't. It
depends on your own feelings."

Annesley said no more, but she did not forget. She thought, if her
understanding of the allegory meant any change of feeling which the man
might be looking for in her, she would never understand. She hated to
look at the line of stark, naked sticks, but they, and the "allegory"
they represented, constantly recurred to her mind.

One day in spring she noticed that the sticks looked less dry. Knob-like
buds had broken out upon them, the first sign that they were living
things. It happened to be Easter eve, and she was restless, full of
strange thoughts as the yellow-flowering grease-wood bushes were full of
rushing sap.

A year ago that night her love for her husband had died its sudden,
tragic death. In the very act of forgiveness, forgiveness had been
killed.

Knight had gone off early that morning in his motor-car, the poor car
which was a pathetic contrast to the glories of last year in England. He
had gone before she was up, and had mentioned to the Chinese cook that he
might not be back until late.

"That means after midnight," she told herself; and since she was free
as air, she decided to take a long walk in the afternoon, as far as the
river. It seemed that if she stayed in the house the thought of life as
it might have been and life as it was would kill her on this day of all
other days.

"I wish I could die!" she said. "But not here. Somewhere a long way off
from everyone--and from _him_."

As she passed the cactus fence the buds were big.

Across the river, where the water flowed high and wide just then, lay
Mexico. Annesley had never been there, though she could easily have gone,
had she wished, from the ranch to El Paso, and from El Paso to the queer
old historic town of Juarez. But she could not have gone without Knight,
and there was no pleasure in travelling with him.

Besides, there was trouble across the border, and fierce fighting now and
then. There had been some thievish raids made by Mexicans upon ranches
along the river not many miles away, and that reminded her how Knight had
re