"I have; and I love the husband, before; but so many years that ees now. You think ees possiblee keep on love when the other have been dead twenty years?" "I think so." "Ay! So I theenk once. But no was intend, I theenk, to live 'lone alway." "Then why have you never married again, dear señora!" Thorpe found the conversation very tiresome. "Ay! The men here--all are alike the one to the other. Never I marry another Californian." "Ah!" "No!" His restless eyes suddenly encountered hers. He felt the blood climb to his hair, his breath come short. His hands desperately sought his pockets. "I am sure, if you went to San Francisco, you would be overwhelmed with offers--from Americans. This room is frightfully warm, don't you think so, señora? Shall I open the door? Ah, what a nuisance! here comes Don Adan Menendez to talk to you, and two other admirers are in his wake. I must release you for the moment. _Hasta luego_, dear señora!" He made his way rapidly down the room, and out of the house. "Great heaven!" he thought. "It is well the week is over. Good God, what a travesty!" and he laughed aloud. He passed through the screaming crowd, which also had its _cascarones_, and walked rapidly and aimlessly up the valley until the white placid walls of the Mission were so close that he could count its arches. He sat down on a rock, and pressed his hands against his head. He resented the quiet and beauty of the night, the repose of the Mission, the dark-blue spangled sky, the soft sobbing of the ocean. If Queen Mab and her train had come down to dance on the brink of hell, the antithesis could not have jarred more hatefully than the night upon his thoughts. He felt a desire to strike something, and hit the rock with his fist. He dug his heel into the ground, then thought of the flour and tinsel on his hair, and laughed aloud. After a time he put his face into his hands and wept. The sobs convulsed him, straining his muscles; the tears seemed wrung from some inner frozen fountain. The storm passed. Calmer, he sat and thought. His love for Nina Randolph, during this interval of quiescence, had lost nothing of its iron. Idealised, she came back to him. Or, rather, he told himself he looked through the husk that the hideous circumstances of her life had bundled into shape, to the soul which spoke to his own. He worshipped her courage. He forgot himself and suffered with her. He hated himself for not having guessed the truth at once, and borne her burden. True, she had lied to him; but the lie was pardonable, and he attached no significance to it. If she had loved him less, she would have confessed the truth, indifferently. Others knew. Her moods passed in review, with keen allurement. He wondered that he had ever wished her a woman of even and tangible temperament. The thought of her variety intoxicated him. The very equilibrium of the world might be disturbed, but he would have her.