Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." What were our powers?
What did God intend men to do with hands and bodies and gifts and souls?
She gazed back over the bleak land and then out across the broad sea.

Only a millionth part of the surface of the unsubmerged earth knew the populous abodes of man.
And the lonely sea, inhospitable to stable homes of men, was thrice the area of the land.

Were men intended, then, to congregate in few places, to squabble and to bicker and breed the discontents that led to injustice, hatred, and war?
What a mystery it all was! But Nature was neither false nor little, however cruel she might be.
Once again Carley fell under the fury of her ordeal.

Wavering now, restless and sleepless, given to violent starts and slow spells of apathy, she was wearing to defeat.
That spring day, one year from the day she had left New York for Arizona, she wished to spend alone.

But her thoughts grew unbearable.
She summed up the endless year.