out in the daytime and tried to apply what he had learned to his personal experience.
He was not responsible for his mind in those days. It flew off at queer tangents, and he found himself developing a habit, when he had any time of leisure, of taking a book and from beneath the shade of a certain orange tree at the foot of the garden, alternately reading and keeping an eye on the shore line. He had a feeling that some day, sooner or later, a tall girl with the free stride of a boy was going to pass along the beach and climb the back entrance to the throne, and when that happened, Jamie wanted to be there to see. The letter in his pocket was exactly the same letter it had been from the first time he had read it, and he had read it times uncounted since and pored over every stroke of each letter. He could reconcile the letter with the girl that he had held in his arms, with the woman who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him and taken the marriage vows. But he could not reconcile either of these people with a girl who had complicated her personal affairs to the extent of being in dire need of the outward signs and symbols of chastity.
The longer he mulled over the situation, the more his mind became at least open to the conviction that the girl of the canyons, and the mountains, and the desert, the girl to whom there persistently clung the odours of sage, whose step was alert, who had the far distance look in the eye of the outdoor person, would not have been subjected to the allurements and temptations of the girl who lives her life at the high pressure of cities. Jamie could see
