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The poor-wills ceased their plaintive cries. A few smaller birds chirped drowsily. Back of the eastern hills the stars became a little dimmer, and the soft night breeze, which had been steadily blowing through the darkened hours, sank quietly to sleep. The subtle magic of nature began to sketch in the picture of day, throwing objects forward from the dull background, taking them bodily out of the blackness, as though creating them anew. Fresh life stirred through everything. The vault of heaven seemed full of it, and all the ravines and by-ways caught up its overflow in a grand chorus of praise to the new-whitening morning.

The woman stirred drowsily and arose, throwing back her heavy hair from her face. The flush of sleep still dyed her cheek a rich crimson, which came and went slowly in the light of the young sun, vying in depth now with the silk of her gown, now with the still deeper tones of a mountain red-bird which splattered into rainbow tints the waters of the brook. She caught the sound of the stream, and went to it. The red-bird retreated circumspectly, silently. She knelt at the banks and splashed the icy water over her face and throat, another red-bird, another wild thing pulsing and palpitating with life. Then she arose to the full height of her splendid body and looked abroad.

The morning swept through her like a river and left her clean. In the eye of nature and before the presence of nature’s innumerable creatures she stood as innocent as they. She had entered into noisome places, but so had the marsh-hawk poising grandly on motionless wing there above. She had scrambled in the mire, and she was ruffled and draggled and besmirched; so likewise had been the silent flame-bird in the thicket, but he had washed clean his plumes and was now singing the universal hymn from the nearest bush-top. The woman drew her lungs full of the morning. She stretched slowly, lazily, her muscles one by one, and stood taller and freer for the act. The debauch of the last night, the debauches of other and worse nights, the acid-like corrosion of that vulgarity which is more subtle than sin even, all these things faded into a past that was dead and gone and buried forever. The present alone was important, and the present brought her, innocent, before an innocent nature. As she stood there dewy-eyed, wistful, glowing, with loosened hair, the grasses clinging to her, and the dew, she looked like a wide-eyed child-angel newly come to earth. To her the morning was great and broad, like a dream to be dreamed and awakened from, something unreal and evanescent which would go. Her heart unfolded to its influence, and she felt within her that tenderness for the beautiful which is nearest akin to holy tears.

As she stood thus, musing, it seemed natural that a human figure should enter and become part of the dream. It seemed natural that it should be a man, and young; that he should be handsome and bold. It seemed natural that he should rein in his horse at the sight of her. So inevitable was it all, so much in keeping with the soft sky, the brooding shadow of the mountain, the squirrel noises, and the day, that she stood there motionless, making no sign, looking up at him with parted lips, saying nothing. He was only a fraction, a small fraction, of all the rest. His fine brown eyes, the curl of his long hair, the bronze of his features mattered no more to her than the play of the sunlight on Harney.

Then he spurred his horse forward, and something in her seemed to snap. From the dream-present the woman was thrust roughly back into her past. The sunlight faded away before her eyes, oozing from the air in drop after drop of golden splendour, the songs of the birds died, the murmuring of the brook became an angry brawl that accused the world of wickedness. The morning fled. From a distance, far away, farther than Harney, farther than the sky, the stranger’s brown eyes looked pityingly. Her sin was no longer animal. It had touched her soul. Instead of an incident it had become a condition which hemmed her in, from which she could not escape. Suddenly she saw the difference. She dwelt in darkness; he, with his clear soul, dwelt in light. She threw herself face downward on the earth, weeping and clutching the grass in the agony of her sin.