"
They walked through the village, the great broken wall of the mountains
rising before them, deceptively near, and yet austerely remote, dazzling
snow domes and spires crowning the rock-buttressed slopes and appearing
sometimes to float, as unsubstantial clouds, in an atmosphere of all
commingling and contrasting blues and purples. Presently they turned
into a lane of mesquite trees. The growth of these trees was thick on
either side and the branches arched above their heads. They had stepped
in a footfall's space into a new world. It was one of those surprising,
almost unbelievable contrasts in which the desert abounds.
A moment before they had gazed upon the mountains, spectacularly vivid
in the clear atmosphere, white peaks and azure skies, green foothills,
serrated with black shadows. Behind them the sun-flooded white glare of
the great, waste place and behold! all these vanished as they set their
feet in this garden inclosed, this bower as green and quiet as the lane
of a distant and far softer and more fertile country.
Pearl never made any conventional attempts at conversation, and for a
time they walked in silence through those fairy aisles where the light
fell golden-green and the sun only filtered in tiny broken disks through
the delicate lace of the mesquite leaves. Then Flick spoke:
"Pearl, I got something to say to you, and it's about the hardest thing
I ever tried to do, because I know," his mouth twisted a little, "that
you're not going to like me any better for it.
Pages:
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62