"I do. Some of your mandates are very easy to observe. We are reasonably sympathetic on more points than one." "We will imagine that all life is to be like this week--only no allusion is to be made during this week to the future, and no allusion in the future to this week." "I will do all I can to respect your wishes as to the first. The second is too ridiculous to notice. We will settle all that when the time comes." To this she vouchsafed no reply, but peered up into the boughs. Her expression changed after a moment; it became impersonal, and her eyes hardened as they always did when her mind alone was at work. "So far, California has evolved no literature," she said. "When it does, I don't doubt it will be a literature of light and charm and comedy--and pleasurable pathos. Writers will continue to go to the dreary moorlands, the dun-coloured skies of England for tragedy settings, and for the atmosphere of tradition and history. It will be hard for any writer who has travelled over the wonderful mountains and valleys of California--you have only seen the worst of it so far--to imagine tragedy in a land of such exultant beauty, under a sun that shines in a blue sky for eight months of the year. Fancy Emily Brontë writing 'Wuthering Heights' in California! The setting is all wrong for anything deeper than the picturesque crimes of desperadoes. But it is the very contrast, this very accompaniment of unreality, that makes our tragedies the harder to bear. I have thought sometimes that if I could come out here on a furious day in winter, and wander about the sand hills by myself, I'd feel as if I had a better right to be miserable--" "I thought we were to have no more such hints this week. I am tired of innuendoes. As I have remarked before, you take an unfair advantage. Let down your hair. It looks full of gold and red in this light, and I want to see it spread out in the sun." "Very well, put my hairpins in your pocket. Take it down yourself, and don't pull, on your life." X The week passed very gaily; the mornings in long rambles, the early afternoon in siesta, its later hours in visits to neighbouring camps, followed by strawberry picking and long evenings about the fire or walking on the beach. Thorpe and Nina were comparatively alone most of the time; and her high spirits, her lavish charm, her sudden moments of seriousness, and her outbursts of passionate affection completed his enthralment. Several times Thorpe caught Mr. Randolph's eyes following him with an expression of peculiar anxiety, and it chafed him not to be able to declare his purpose plainly; but for the week he was bound. On the whole, it was a happy week. As it neared its end, Thorpe knew that his mind was possessing hers, that her will was weakening, and love flooding reason. Once or twice she gave him a glance of timid appeal; but she would not discuss the position. His mastery was the more nearly complete as he kept his promise and ignored the future.