And she rejected the frowning mass of red rock, upreared, riven and split and canyoned, so grim and aloof--for that was barren.

But she accepted the vast sloping valley of sage, rolling gray and soft and beautiful, down to the dim mountains and purple ramparts of the horizon.

Lucy did not know what she yearned for, she did not know why the desert called to her, she did not know in what it resembled her spirit, but she did know that these three feelings were as one, deep in her heart.

For ten years, every day of her life, she had watched this desert scene, and never had there been an hour that it was not different, yet the same.
Ten years--and she grew up watching, feeling--till from the desert's thousand moods she assimilated its nature, loved her bonds, and could never have been happy away from the open, the color, the freedom, the wildness.

On this birthday, when those who loved her said she had become her own mistress, she acknowledged the claim of the desert forever.