“You must always do that,” she informed them, as she set her teeth hungrily into the bread, “and when they offer of theirs you must look pleased with the attention.” Mrs. Moulton sighed, and when, a few moments later, a peasant vaulted over the seats and proudly offered of his store of black bread and garlic, she buried a frozen smile in her smelling-salts. Jane refused to notice him, but the other three declined with such professions of gratitude that he told his comrades the Americans were not altogether a contemptible race, and that the one who spoke their language looked like a devil with a white soul and was worthy to have been born in Spain. He took out his guitar in a moment and swept the keys with superb grace while the others sang, the nuns in high, quavering voices that wandered aimlessly through the rich tones of the men. After that they talked politics and became so excited that Mr. Moulton was relieved when they all fell out together at Mataro. He could then take notes and enjoy the groves of olives and oranges, the castles and watch-towers on the heights, eloquent and Iberian and Roman, Goth and Moor, the turquoise surface of the Mediterranean—never so blue as the Adriatic or the Caribbean—the bold, harsh sweep of the coast. Then, as even Catalina began to change her position frequently on the hard seats, and they were all so covered with dust that even the spinster visage of Jane looked like a study in grotesque, the horizon gave up the palaces and palms of Barcelona. III Twenty-three years before the opening of this desultory tale its heroine was born on the island of Santa Catalina, a fragment of Southern California. Her father had begun life as a professor of classics in a worthy Eastern college, but, his health breaking down, he betook himself and his small patrimony to the State which electrifies the nerves in its northern half and blunts them in its southern. Jonathan Shore wrote to his cousin, Lyman T. Moulton: “I haven’t a nerve left with a point on it; have recovered some measure of health and lost what little ambition I ever possessed. I am going to open an inn for sportsmen on the island of Santa Catalina, so that I shall be reasonably sure of the society of gentlemen and make enough money to replenish my library now and then—my books are on the way. Here I remain for the rest of my natural life.”