For a space Letitia stood motionless as a statue, a tall and splendid figure in her gleaming dress, on which fine lines of interwoven silver-work caught and lost the light. Then, rousing herself, she moved about heavily but methodically, putting out the remaining lights. When they were all extinguished she crossed the hall and slowly ascended the stairway, the silken whisperings of her skirts being the only sound in the sleeping house. V The season had worn itself away to June. The winds were an established fact, and blew from the ocean down the long clefts of the streets out into the bay beyond. Outside the Golden Gate the fog lay along the horizon like the faint gray shores of a distant country. When the winds dropped at sundown, it came creeping in, drawing its white cloak over the water, across the dunes, and finally down the streets and round the houses. All night it brooded close over the city, sleeping on its crowded hills, and in the morning lay brimming in every hollow till the valleys looked like cups crowned high with a curdling white drink. When the sun had driven it back to its cloud-country on the horizon, there were wonderful mornings, all blue and gold. The warm rays licked up the night's moisture, and for a few clear, still hours had the world to themselves. They burned the land dry and parched. The hills at the mouth of the bay turned fawn-color, and looked like lean, crouching lions with hides that fell away from their gaunt bones. The sea and sky were a hard-baked blue, with the little sails of boats and the strenuous green leafage of tropical plants seeming as if inlaid in the turquoise background. The gardens about South Park grew dustier and drier. Only the aloes appeared to have sap enough to retain any color, and against the faded monochrome of the surrounding shrubs they shone a strong, cold gray-blue. In the Western Addition the gardens were watered and bloomed extravagantly, till the ivy geraniums hung from the window-boxes like pieces of pink carpet, and the heliotropes dashed themselves in purple spray to the second stories. Fashionable people were leaving town daily. Some were going to the redwoods, where the forest glades are dim and still and full of a chill solemnity, like the aisles of old cathedrals. Others were en route for one of the twin towns which tip the points of the crescent that holds Monterey Bay between its horns. Many were repairing to the country houses which have sprung up in scattered clusters down the line of the railroad to the Santa Clara valley. Here they found the warmth and idleness which Californians love. All summer the vast expanse of the valley, shut in from wind and fog by a rampart of hills, brooded under perpetual sunshine. In the motionless noons its yellow fields, where the shadows of the live-oaks lie round and black, swam in quivering veils of heat, and the smell of the tar-weed rose heavy and aromatic, like the incense from a hundred altars.