Then his thoughts became practical once more. Her admission that she loved him had given him a right to control her life, to protect her, to think for both. He was a very high-handed man, and, having made up his mind to marry Nina Randolph, he regarded her opposition as non-existent. He would argue it out with her, when she was ready to speak, knowing that the mental tide of woman, when undammed, must have its way; but he alone would decide the issue. He should no longer torment himself with imaginings, rehearsing every ill that could befall a woman, whether the act of her own folly or the cruel hatching of Circumstance. It mattered nothing; he should marry her. His want of her was maddening. The desire to pluck her from her present life, to make her happy, possessed him. IX The next morning all were up at eight and picking strawberries for breakfast. The prolonged and vociferous music of the horn had precluded all hope of laziness, and the late seekers after sleep were obliged to turn out with the best grace possible. A plunge in the sea had animated the men for the day, and the women were very fresh and amiable. After breakfast they scattered about the hills and beach. It was a cloudless dark-blue day. The air was warm and dry. The bleak sand dunes were reclaimed for a brief season by the vivid green of willow and oak, the fields of purple lupin and yellow poppy; the trade winds were elsewhere, and the vegetation of San Francisco enjoyed its brief span of life. A ship with all her sails spread drifted, sleepily, over the bar. Thorpe and Nina climbed an eminence from which they could see the Mission Dolores, far on the right, the smoke curling languidly from its great chimneys; the square Presidio of romantic memories and prosaic present; the distant city, whose loud feverish pulse they fancied they could hear. They sat down under a tree. Nina took off her hat, and threw back her head. "I think I am the re-embodiment of some pagan ancestor," she said. "On days like this, I care nothing for a single responsibility in life, nor for what to-morrow will bring, nor for a religion nor a creed, nor for the least nor greatest that civilisation has accomplished. I don't even long for Europe and the higher intellectual life. It is enough that I am alive, that my eyes see only beauty, and my skin feels warmth. I worship the sun and the sky and the flowers and the trees and the sea, above all the warm quick atmosphere. They seem to me the only things worth loving." "They are not the only things you love, however." "No, I love you and my father. I hate my mother. But I always manage to forget her existence when I am off like this, and she is out of my sight--" "Why do you hate your mother?" "That is one of the things you are not to know yet. This week you are to hear nothing that is not pleasant. I wish you to feel like a pagan, too."