The Meridian times. (Meridian, Idaho) 1909-1938, 1919-03-14
CHAPTER vII-contInued.

The windstorm the previous week
had made a sickening devastation of
her labors. The morning -glories alone
were scatheless. A pink oIeander
dropped many broken branches from
which miracles Of perfect flowers were
unfolding. The. prettiest blossom to
Hardin was the gardener herself She
was vivid from eager toll. Hardin
looked at her'approbatively. He liked
her khaki suit, simple as a uniform,
with its flowing black tie and leather
belt. She looked more like herself to-
day. She had bleached out, in Tucson.
She had been letting herself get too
tanned, running around without hats.
Sunburn paled the value of those
splendid eyes of hers. He could always
tease her by likening them to topazes.
His eyes ran over the pink and pur-
pie lines of cord-trained vines which
made floral screens for her tent. Free
of the strings overhead, they rioted
over the ramada, the second roof, of
living boughs. He acknowledged their
beauty. They gave grace to bare ne
thirsty desert just beyond.
He remembered his own ramada.
Gerry had hated it, had complained of
it so bitterly when she came home
from New York that he had had it
pulled down and replaced by V roof
of pine boards, glarifg and ugly. Gerty
was satisfied. for it was clean; she no
longer felt that she lived in a squaw
house. Let the Indians have ramadas !;
there was no earthly reason she should.
He had urged that the desert dwellers
had valuable hints to give them. But
what was remada to him, or anything
else? Hardin turned to leave.
She did not want him to go so soon.
She pointed out new vine to him.
She had brought it from Tucson;
4Kudzu," they called it; a japanese
vine. And there was another broken
rose, quite beyond the help of stripped
handkerchiefs and mesquit splints.
He followed her around the tent, her
prattle falling from his grim mood. He
was not thinking of her flowers except
as hooking parallel. The desert
storm had made havoc of his garden
IA sorry botch of his life. He and
Innes had been trying to make a gar
den out of desert; the desert had
flouted them. 1t was not his fault.
Something had happened; something
quite beyond his power. Luck was
turning against him.
lines, why. she was playing as with
a toy. 1t was the natural instinct of a
woman to make things pretty around
her. But he had sacrificed his youth,
his chances. His domestic life, too
he should never have carried dainty
little woman like Gerry into the des-
ert. He had never reproached her for
leaving him, even last time when he
thought 1t was for good. The word
burned his wound. Whose good? His
or Gerty's? Somehow, though they
wrangled, he always knew it would
turn out all right; life would run
smoothly when they left the desert.
But things were getting worse; his
mouth puckered over some recollec-
tions. Yet he loved Gerty; he couldn't
picture life without her. He decided
that it was because there had never
been anyone else. Most fellows had
had sweethearts before they married I;
he had not, nor mistress when she
left him, though God knows, it would
have been easy enough. His mouth
fell into sardonic lines. Those half
breed womenl No one, even when a
divorce had hung over him. oh, he
knew what their friends made of each
of Gerty's heightened flights; he knew !
But that had been spared him, that
vulgar grisly spectacle of modern life
when two people who have been lovers
drag the carcass of their love over the
grimy floor of curious gaping court.
He shuddered. Gerty loved him. Else,
why had she come back to him? Why
had she not kept her threat when he
refused to abandon his desert project
and turn his abilities into a more
profitable dedication? He could see
her face as she stared flushing up into
his that nipping cold day when he had
run into her on Broadway. He remem-
bered her coquetry when she suggest
ed that there was plenty Of room in
her apartment His wife She spoke
of seeing his pictures In the papers.
HE had grown to be great manp
That piQuant meeting. the week fol