Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/26

 when one crossed the river one was at once in a green valley, filled with peace and rest, but there was no appreciable difference. It was only later in the afternoon that a change became apparent, that the country ceased to be broken and began to roll, and far away mountains loomed blue against the sky.

The train was climbing slowly up the great plateau. Now and then it stopped, and milk cans, trunks, and crates of chickens were put on and off. The sun was blazing. Here and there Kay on the rear platform began to see small cultivated spots, alfalfa, grain already turning yellow. She vaguely resented them; they were trying to civilize the valley. She saw no pathos then in the shipping pens and the small red grain elevators side by side. She was conscious however of a rising exultation, a peculiar tingling of the blood, a sense of lightness and anticipation. Even of home-coming. And then the train swung out from between two tall buttes and she saw the lights of Ursula.

Always afterwards she was to remember Ursula at twilight, its streets and windows lighted, an impassive Indian with braids standing' under a station lamp, the cool evening air blowing down from the mountains, and behind the town, the purple back drop of the mountains, with one peak higher than the others covered with snow and crowned with glory. And mixed with that was to be her first sight of Tom McNair.

They stood on the car platform; Nora counted the bags, her mother drew her wrap around her, her father looked about.

"Nobody here!" he said.

Then the station agent came along and peered up at them through his glasses.

"Mr. Dowling?"

"That's right."

"No hurry, Mr. Dowling. Take your time. The car's to be taken off here, I understand?"

"Yes. Who's here to get us? Mallory?"

"It's McNair, I think. At least I saw him That you, Tom?"