Then the taxi clattered on up the Avenue, to turn down a side street and presently stop at Carley's home.

It was a modest three-story brown-stone house.
Carley had been so benumbed by sensations that she did not imagine she could experience a new one.

But peering out of the taxi, she gazed dubiously at the brownish-red stone steps and front of her home.
"I'm going to have it painted," she muttered, as if to herself.
Her aunt and her friends laughed, glad and relieved to hear such a practical remark from Carley.

How were they to divine that this brownish-red stone was the color of desert rocks and canyon walls?
In a few more moments Carley was inside the house, feeling a sense of protection in the familiar rooms that had been her home for seventeen years.

Once in the sanctity of her room, which was exactly as she had left it, her first action was to look in the mirror at her weary, dusty, heated face.