"I promise." Involuntarily his mouth curled into a grin. The ghosts of a respectable company of extorted promises capered across his brain, as small irreverent ghosts have a habit of doing in great moments. But his mouth was close upon hers, and she did not see it. An hour later she pointed outward. Far away, above the Eastern mountains, was a line of flame. The sun rose slowly. It smiled down upon the phantom ocean and flung bubbles of a thousand hues to the very feet of the mortals on the heights. Then slowly, softly, the ocean moved. It quivered as if a mighty hand struck it from its foundations, swayed, rose, fled back to the sea that had given it birth. A moment more and the world was visible again, awake, and awaiting them. BOOK II I Mr. Randolph owned a large ranch in Lake County which was managed by an agent. A mile distant from the farm-house in which the agent lived with the "hands" was a cottage, built several years since at Nina's request. As Lake County was then difficult of access, Mr. Randolph seldom visited his ranch, his wife never; but once a year Nina took a party of girl friends to the cottage, usually in mid-summer. This year she went alone. Immediately after Thorpe's departure she told her father of the conditional engagement into which she had entered. "And I wish to spend this year alone," she added. "Not only because I want to get away from my mother, but because I believe that nothing will help me more than entire change of associations. And solitude has no terrors for me. I simply cannot go on in the old routine. I am bored to death with the meaninglessness of it. That has come suddenly: probably because I have come to want so much more." "But wouldn't you rather travel, Nina?" Mr. Randolph was deeply anxious; he hardly knew whether to approve her plan or not. A year's solitude would drive him to madness. "No, I want to live with myself. If I rushed from one distraction to another I should not feel sure of myself at the end. I have thought and thought; and, besides, I want to see and live Europe with Dudley Thorpe alone. I feel positive that my plan is the right one. Only keep my mother away." "I will tell her plainly that if she follows you, I'll shut her up in the Home of the Inebriates; and this time I'll keep my word. What excuse shall you give people?" "You can tell them of my engagement, and say that as we have agreed it shall last a year, I have my own reasons for spending the interval by myself. Their comments mean nothing to me." "Shall you see no one?" "Molly will come occasionally, and you,--no one else. I shall fish and hunt and sail and ride and read and study music. Perhaps you will send me a little piano?" "Of course I will." "I shall live out of doors mostly. I love that sort of life better than any; I like trees better than most people."