John Gault, who belonged to a later era of California's prosperity than the colonel, had heard that there was such a person, but had never seen her. He did not fraternize with the old man, whom he regarded as a painful landmark in the city's record of blighted hopes and ruined careers. Like many of his kind, he had an intense, selfish dislike for all that played upon his sympathies or moved him to an uncomfortable and discomposing pity. One afternoon in the past winter he had gone across town to South Park to see some houses left him by his father, for which he had received a reasonable offer. On the way home, passing through one of the small cross-streets that connect the larger thoroughfares, he had encountered Colonel Reed and a lady. He would have passed them with the ordinary salutation, had not the lady, who had been gazing into the wayside gardens, turned her head as he approached and looked indifferently at him with what he thought were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. He stopped and greeted the colonel with the polite friendliness to be expected of wayfarers who encounter one another in such distant localities. The colonel, who was always childishly flattered by the notice of well-known men, was expansive, and, after a few moments of casual talk, introduced the younger man to his daughter. Then they walked together to the old man's house, which was some little distance away. The colonel, stopping at the gate, invited the stranger in. John Gault noticed that the girl did not second the invitation, and excused himself on the ground of pressing business. But the colonel, who had never got over the hospitable habits of his _beaux jours_, urged him to come some evening. "Viola," said the old man, smiling proudly on his daughter, "will be glad to see you, too. She's the housewife--runs everything, myself included." Thus appealed to, she added her invitation to her father's, and Gault said he would come. As he walked away, he wondered if she wanted him to come. It had seemed to him as if she had spoken under pressure and reluctantly, though she had been perfectly polite. But it was impossible to tell what a woman thought, or when she was pleased or displeased, and the next week he went. Three months had passed since then. The visit had been repeated many times, each time under almost exactly similar circumstances. Evening after evening Gault had listened to the colonel, wondering why he came, why he subjected himself to this absurd imposition, why he sat meek and generally mute under the conversational assaults of the garrulous old man. And yet, the day after his seventh visit, he sat in his private office wondering how soon he could go again to the little house near South Park without causing surprise to its inmates or breaking the rules of conventionality and deliberation that governed his life.