Page 131 (1/1)

"If it were true! Oh, I ht lift my head!" she cried

"Lift it then--you child For I swear it's true"

She did lift her head with the singular wild grace always a part of her actions, with that old unconscious intimation of innocence which always tortured Venters, but noith so from the depths that linked itself to his brave words

"I've been thinking--too," she cried, with quivering s breast "I've discovered --I'm alive--I'm so full--oh! I'm a woman!"

"Bess, I believe I can claim credit of that last discovery--before you," Venters said, and laughed

"Oh, there'sI o to Cottonwoods?"

"As soon as the storms are past, or the worst of theo I can't now I don't kno I shall then But itFor in spite of what you say there's a chance you htn't come back"

Day after day the ind blew across the valley Day after day the clouds clustered gray and purple and black The cliffs sang and the caves rang with Oldring's knell, and the lightning flashed, the thunder rolled, the echoes crashed and crashed, and the rains flooded the valley Wild flowers sprang up everywhere, swaying with the lengthening grass on the terraces, s wondrously from year-dry crevices of the walls The valley bloo of the gold bar through the bridge at dawn on to the reddening of rays over the western wall, was one of colorful change The valley swaolden at daarht

At the end of every storht forest to shine and fade and leave lingeringly some faint essence of its rosy iris in the air

Venters walked with Bess, once e on the walls, and faced the wind froe, sweet tidings of far-off things It blew from a place that was old and whispered of youth

It blen the grooves of ti hours It breathed low of fightingof love That ever was the burden of its tidings--youth in the shady woods, waders through the wet erow stile, bathers in the boo strolls down ers locked and bursting hearts and longing lips--fros of unquenchable love