Anna the Adventuress

"You will write to me, I am sure--and from the date of your

letter I trust most earnestly that I may come back to my old

place as "Your devoted friend,

"WALTER BRENDON."

She set the letter down, and drew from her pocket another with a

foreign post mark which had come the day before. This one too she

read.

"HASSELL'S CAMP,

"NEAR COLORADO.

"On or about the day you receive this letter, Anna, the six

months will be up. Do you expect me, I wonder. I think not. At

any rate, here I am, and here I shall be, twenty thousand feet

above all your poison-reeking cities, up where God's wind comes

fresh from heaven, very near indeed to the untrodden snows.

Sometimes I tremble, Anna, to think how near I came to passing

through life without a single glimpse, a moment's revelation of

this greatest and most awful of mysteries, the mystery of

primaeval nature. It is a true saying that in the mountains there

is peace. One's sense of proportion, battered out of all shape in

the daily life of cities, reasserts itself. I love you still,

Anna, but life holds other things than the love of man for woman.

Some day I shall come back, and I will show you on canvas the

things which have come to me up here amongst the eternal silence.

"Many nights I have thought of you, Anna. Your face has flitted

out of my watch-fire, and then I have been a haunted man. But

with the morning, the glorious unstained morning the passion of

living would stir even the blood of a clod. It comes over the

mountains, Anna, pink darkening into orange red, everywhere a

wonderful cloud sea, scintillating with colour. It is enough to

make a man throw away canvas and brushes into the bottomless

precipices, enough to make one weep with despair at his utter and

absolute impotence. Nature is God, Anna, and the greatest artist

of us all a pigmy. When I think of those ateliers of ours, the

art jargon, the decadents with their flamboyant talk I long for

a two-edged sword and a minute of Divinity. To perdition with

them all.

"I shall come back, if at all, a new man. I have a new cult to

teach, a new enthusiasm. I feel years younger, a man again. My

first visit will be to you. I must tell you all about God's land,

this marvellous virgin country, with its silent forests and

dazzling peaks. I make no apology for not being with you now. You

love Ennison. Believe me, the bitterness of it has almost

departed, crushed out of me together with much of the weariness

and sorrow I brought with me here by the nameless glory of these

lonely months. Yet I shall think of you to-day. I pray, Anna,

that you may find your happiness.