Patience turned abruptly and ran upstairs. As she locked her door she thought with some satisfaction: “Now that I know myself I can control myself. If I’d jumped on her then she’d have fallen in the stove.” As her imagination had not dwelt at great length upon the proposed change the disappointment was not as keen as it might have been, much as she desired to leave Monterey. Moreover, she was occupied with Rosita and the coming examinations. And did she not have her Byron? She rose at dawn and read him. In the evening she went over to the tower and declaimed him to the grey ocean whose passions were eternal. The owl, who regarded Byron as a great bore, closed his eyes when she began and went to sleep. Sometimes—when the sun rode high—she sat upon the rubbish over Junipero Serra’s bones, and with one eye out for rats and snakes and tarantulas, conned a new poem. She liked the contrast between the desolation and death in the old ruin and the warm atmosphere of the poetry. As often Byron was unheeded, and she dreamed of the mysterious stranger who had so magnetised her that she had forgotten to ask his name. She had only to close her eyes to hear his voice, to recall the words which seemed forever moving in one or other chamber of her mind, to see the profile which she admired quite as much as Byron’s. As for the voice, it had a possessing quality which made her understand the wherefore of the thrilling notes of the male bird in spring-time. She invested her ambitious young lawyer with all the dark sardonic melancholic fascinations of Lara, Conrad, Manfred, and Don Juan. The wild sweet sting of spring was in her veins. Her mind was full of vague illusions, very lovely and very strange, shifting of outline and wholly inexplicable. XII On the afternoon of the last day of school several of the girls decorated the hall with garlands and flags. Carpenters erected a stage, and Patience arranged the “properties.” When the great night arrived and Monterey in its best attire crowded the room, no curtain in the sleepy town had ever been regarded with more complacent expectation. The Montereñas were thoroughly satisfied with their offspring, and performances of any sort were few. The programme was opened by Manuela, who wore an old pink satin frock of her mother’s cut short and trimmed with a flounce of Spanish lace. Her brown shining face looked good will upon all the world as she recited “The Wreck of the Hesperus.” Then came a dialogue in which all the little participants wore white frocks and crimped hair. Meanwhile, in the dressing-room, Rosita was limp in Patience’s arms. “Oh, Patita!” she gasped, “I can’t! I can’t! I’m frightened to death! What shall I do?”