I felt a sense of actual loss.

So real had been the illusion that I could not believe I was not soon to drink and wade and dabble in the cool waters.
Disappointment was keen.

This is what maddens the prospector or sheep-herder lost in the desert.

Was it not a terrible thing to be dying of thirst, to see sparkling water, almost to smell it and then realize suddenly that all was only a lying track of the desert, a lure, a delusion?
I ceased to wonder at the Mormons, and their search for water, their talk of water.

But I had not realized its true significance.