Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/90

 out myself sometimes, but I know I'll never be happy anywhere else."

"I don't expect to be happy, but I've got to know things."

"What things, Judith?"

The girl turned from Douglas to gaze at the far light on Fire Mesa.

"The truth about things," she said at last. "Inez says there's just one big fact at the bottom of everything and that is sex, and that there's only one thing worth living for, to make sex beautiful."

"She's a liar!" exclaimed Douglas indignantly, as if Inez had said something shameful. "Where does she get that rotten stuff?"

"From Charleton and poetry, I guess. How do you know she's wrong, Doug?"

Douglas sat up, his clear eyes blazing like blue stars out of his sunburned face. "Because I know! I want to have the biggest, finest ranch in the Rockies. Is that sex? You want a good education. Is that sex? Peter wants me to carry on some dreams my mother and grandfather had. Is that sex? What does that woman think the world was made for, I'd like to know?"

"That's just it," Judith sighed with all the sadness of sixteen, "what is it made for?"

There was silence for a moment on the hay rick while the two young questioners gazed at the incomparable grandeur about them. And as he gazed there returned to Douglas the sense of panic that had harassed him after Oscar's death. What did it all mean? Whither was he directed and by what? How long before he too would be swept into the awful void beyond the grave?