"You must develop a faculty--or no, leave it to me. I shall gradually but firmly insist upon having a day or two a week to myself; and Miss Geary informs me that such unprecedented energy can never last in this Vale of Sleep; that before a month is over we shall all have settled down to a chronic state of somnolence from which we shall awaken from Saturday till Monday only. Then, indeed, will Menlo be the ideal spot of which I dreamed while you left me to myself on that long day of my visit." Her hat was in the hall. She put it on hastily back foremost, and they walked toward the woods. Suddenly she turned into a side path. "Let us walk through the orchard," she said. "Then we shall not meet anyone." The cherries were gone; but the yellow apricots, the golden pears, the red peaches and nectarines, the purple plums, hung heavy among the abundant green, or rotted on the ground. Several poor children were stealing frankly, filling sacks almost as large as themselves. Don Roberto had never so far unbent as to give the village people permission to remove the superfluity of his orchard, but he winked at their depredations, as they saved him the expense of having it carted away; his economical graft had never been able to overcome his haughty aversion to selling the produce of his private estate. Magdalena often came to the orchard to talk to these children: the poor fascinated her, and she liked to feel that she was helping them with words and dimes; but they were not as the poor of whom she had read, nor yet of the fire. They were tow-headed and soiled of face, but they wore stout boots and well-made calico frocks, and they were not without dimes of their own. "Does California seem a little unreal to you?" she asked. "I mean, there are no great contrasts. The poverty of London must be frightful." "You ungrateful person, for Heaven's sake reap the advantage of your birthright and forget the countries that are not California." They passed out of the back gate and entered the middle woods. Magdalena without hesitation led the way to the retreat hitherto sacred to Art. Trennahan need not have apprehended that she would inflict him with her manuscript, nor with hopes and fears: she was much too shy to mention the subject unless he drew her deliberately; but she liked the idea of associating him with this leafy and sacred temple. He threw himself on his back at once, clasping his hands under his head and gazing up into the rustling storeys above. About his head was a low persistent hum, a vibration of a sound of many parts. Above were only the intense silences of a hot California morning.