"This is the hour for romance, my dear. In the years to come, when you are very prosaically my wife with a thousand duties, and grumbling at my exactions, your consolation will be the memory of some moment like this, when you were able to feel romantic and sad. I wish I could arrange for some such set of memories for myself, but I am unequal to your divine melancholy. When I cannot see you I am cross and sulky; and just now--I am, well--philosophically happy. Some day I shall be happier, but this is well enough. And I can harbor no ugly presentiments. As I entered California I was elated with a sense of coming happiness, of future victories; and I prefer to dwell upon that, the more particularly as in a measure the prophetic hint has been fulfilled. So make the most of the present. I shall see you daily during this last precious fortnight, for I am determined this arrangement shall cease; and you must exorcise coquetry and abet me whenever there is a chance of a word alone." She nodded, but she noted with a sigh that he said no more of sudden flight. She would never have consented to jeopardize the least of his interests, but she fain would have been besought. The experience she had had of the vehemence and fire in Rezanov made her long for his complete subjugation and the happiness it must bring to herself. But as he smiled tenderly above her she saw that his practical brain had silenced the irresponsible demands of love, and although she did not withdraw from his arms she stiffened her head. "I fancy I shall return home to-morrow," she said. "My mother tells me that she can live without me no longer, and that Father Abella has reminded her that if I stay in the house of Elena Castro I shall be as free from gossip as here. I infer that he has rated my two parents for making a martyr of me unnecessarily, and told them it was a duty to enliven my life as much as possible before I enter upon this long period of probation. The grating of my room at Elena's is above a little strip of Garden, and faces the blank wall of the next house. Sometimes--who knows?" She shrugged her shoulders and gave a gay little laugh, then stood very erect and moved past him to the door. She had recognized the shuffling step of Father Abella. "Is supper ready, padre mio?" she asked sweetly. "His excellency and I have talked so much that we are very hungry."