"Who else is to be of the party?"

"Molly, Guadalupe, and Captain Hastings. Don't speak of it to any one else. I don't want a crowd."

She lay back, her skirts sweeping his feet. A pink ribbon was twisted in her hair. The colour in her cheeks was pink. The pose of her head, as she absently regarded the stupid frescoes on the ceiling, strained her beautiful throat, making it look as hard as ivory, accentuating the softer loveliness of the neck. Thorpe looked at her steadily. He rarely touched her hand.

"I have something else in store for you," she said, after a moment.

"Just beyond the army posts are great beds of wild strawberries. It was a custom in the Spanish days to get up large parties every spring and camp there, gather strawberries, wander on the beach and over the hills, and picnic generally. We have kept it up; and if this weather lasts, if spring is really here, a crowd of us are going in a couple of weeks--you included. You have no idea what fun it is!"

"I shall not try to imagine it." He spoke absently. He was staring at a curling lock that had strayed over her temple. He wanted to blow it.

"I am tired," she said. "Talk to me. I have been gabbling for an hour."

"I'm not in the mood for talking," he said, shortly. "But keep quiet, if you want to. I suppose we know each other well enough for that."

The other people left the room. Nina arranged herself more comfortably, and closed her eyes. Her mouth relaxed slightly, and Thorpe saw the lines about it. She looked older when the animation was out of her face, but none the less attractive. His eyes fell on her neck. He moved closer. She opened her eyes, and he raised his. The colour left her face, and she rose.

"Take me to papa," she said; "I am going home."

V

The party for the elk-hunt a.s.sembled at Mr. Randolph's door at four o'clock on Monday morning. Miss Hathaway's large Spanish eyes were heavy with the languor of her race. Miss Shropshire looked cross. Even the men were not wholly animate. Nina alone was as widely awake as the retreating stars. She rode ahead with Thorpe.

They made for the open country beyond the city. What is now a large and populous suburb, was then a succession of sand dunes, in whose valleys were thickets of scrub oak, chaparral, and willows. A large flat lying between Rincon Hill and Mission Bay was the favourite resort of elk, deer, antelope, and the less aristocratic coyote and wild cat. It was to this flat that Mr. Randolph's party took their way, accompanied by vaqueros leading horses upon which to bring back the spoils of the morning.

The hour was grey and cold. The landscape looked inexpressibly bleak. A bl.u.s.tering wind travelled between the sea and the bay. From the crests of the hills they had an occasional glimpse of water and of the delapidated Mission, solitary on its cheerless plain. In the little valleys, the thickets were so dense they were obliged to bend their heads. The morning was intensely still, but for the soft pounding of the horses' hoofs on the yielding earth, the long despairing cry of the coyote, the sudden flight of a startled wild cat.

"We are all so modern, we seem out of place in this wilderness," said Thorpe. "I can hardly accept the prophecy of your father and other prominent men here, that San Francisco will one day be the great financial and commercial centre of Western America. It seems to me as hopeless as making cake out of bran."

"Just you wait," said Nina, tossing her head. "It will come in our time, in my father's time. You haven't got the feel of the place yet, haven't got it into your bones. And you don't know what we Californians can do, when we put our minds to it."

"I hope I shall see it," he replied, smiling; "I hope to see California at many stages of her growth. I am a nomad, you know, and I shall make it the objective point of my travels hereafter. The changes--I don't doubt if they come at all they will ride the lightning--will interest me deeply. May there be none in you," he added, gallantly. "I cannot imagine any."

Her eyes drooped, and her underlids pressed upward,--a repellant trick that had made Thorpe uncomfortable more than once. "That is where you will find the changes upon which the city will not pride itself," she said. "Fortunately, there won't be many of them."

"You are unfair," he said, angrily. "You told me to ask you no questions, and this is not the first time you have deliberately p.r.i.c.ked my curiosity--that is not the word, either. The first night I dined at your house--" he stopped, biting his lip. He had said more than he intended.

"I know. You thought you had discovered the secret--I know exactly what you thought. But you have come to the conclusion since that there is more behind. Well, you are right."

"What is your secret? I have had opportunities to discover. I hope I need not tell you that I have shut my ears; but I wish you would tell me. I don't like mystery. It is sensational and old-fashioned. Between such friends as ourselves, it is entirely without excuse. It is more than possible that, girl-like, you have exaggerated its importance, and you are in danger of becoming morbid. But, whether it is real or imaginary, let me help you. Every woman needs a man's help, and you can have all of mine that you want. Only don't keep prodding my imagination, and telling me not to think. I am close upon thinking of nothing else."

"Well, just fancy that that is my way of making myself interesting; that I cannot help flirting a little, even with friends." She laughed lightly; but her face, which was not always under her control, had changed: it looked dull and heavy.

"That is pure nonsense," he said, shortly. "Do you suppose you make yourself more interesting by hinting that your city will one day be ashamed of you?"

"Ah, perhaps _that_ was an exaggeration."

"I should hope so."

"I meant one's city need not know everything."

"You are unpleasantly perverse this morning. I choose to take what you said as an exaggeration; but there is something behind, and I feel strongly impelled to say that if you don't tell me I shall leave."

"If I did, you would take the next steamer."

"I am the one to decide that. At least give me the opportunity to reduce your mountain to a mole-hill."

"Even you could not. And look--I see no reason why friends should wish to get at one another's inner life. The companionship of friends is mental only. I have given you my mind freely. You have no right to ask for my soul. You are not my lover, and you don't wish to be, although I don't doubt that at times you imagine you do."

"I am free to confess that I have imagined it more than once. I will set the example by being perfectly frank with you. If I could understand you, if I were not tormented by all sorts of dreadful possibilities, I should have let myself go long before this. Does that sound cold-blooded? I can only say in explanation that I was born with a good deal of self-control, and that I have strengthened my will by exercise.

It would be either one extreme or the other with me. At first I thought I should not want to marry you in any case. I am now sufficiently in love with you to long to be wholly so."

Nina stole a glance at him with a woman's uncontrollable curiosity, even in great moments. But he had turned his head from her, and was. .h.i.tting savagely at his boot.

"I will be frank to this extent, by way of return: The barrier between us is insurmountable, and you would be the first to admit it. I will tell you the whole truth the day before you leave; that must content you. And, meanwhile, nip in the bud what is merely a compound of sympathy and pa.s.sion. I know the influence I exert perfectly. I have seen more than one man go off his head. It humiliates me beyond expression."

"It need not--although it is extremely distasteful to me that you should have seen men go off their heads, as you express it. But pa.s.sion is the mightiest factor in love; there is no love without it, and it is bound to predominate until it is satisfied. Then the affections claim their part; and a dozen other factors, mental companionship for one, enter in.

But, for Heaven's sake, don't add to your morbidity by despising yourself because you inspire pa.s.sion in men. The women who do not are not worth considering."

"Is that true? Well, I am glad you have suggested another way of looking at it. I don't think I am morbid. At all events no one in this world ever made a harder fight not to be."

They were riding through a thicket, and he turned and brought his face so close to hers that she had only a flashing glimpse of its pallor and of the flame in his eyes.

"It is your constant fight that wrings my heart," he said. "Whatever it is against, I will make it with you, if you will let me. I am strong enough for both. And who am I that I should judge you? I have not lived the life of a saint. We all have our ideals. Mine has been never to give way except when I chose, never to let my senses control my mind for an instant. I believe, therefore, that I am strong enough to help and protect you against everything. And, whatever it is, you shall never be judged by me."

They left the thicket at the moment, and she pushed her horse aside, that she might no longer feel Thorpe's touch, his breath on her neck.

"You are the most generous of men," she said; "and you can have the satisfaction of knowing that you have made me think better of myself and of human nature than I have ever thought before. But I cannot marry you.

Not only is the barrier insurmountable, but I don't love you. Here we are."

VI

Thorpe at this time spent few hours in his own company. There was abundant distraction: either a social entertainment every day or evening, or a lark in the city. The wild life about the plaza, the gambling houses, the saloons, the fatal encounters in the dark contiguous streets, the absolute recklessness of the men and women, interested him profoundly. As he spent money freely, and never pa.s.sed a gaming table without tossing down a handful of coin as ardently as any adventurer, he was popular, and free to come and go as he liked.

The scene which he most frequented, which rose most vividly when he was living his later life in England, was El Dorado. It had three great windows on the plaza and six in its length,--something over a hundred and twenty feet. The brilliant and extraordinary scene within was visible to those who shunned it but stood with a fascinated stare; for its curtains were never drawn, its polished windows were close upon the sidewalk. On one side, down its entire length, was a bar set with expensive crystal, over which pa.s.sed every variety of drink known to the appet.i.te of man. Behind the bar were mirrors from floor to ceiling, reflecting the room, doubling the six crystal blazing chandeliers, the forty or fifty tables piled high with gold and silver, the hard intent faces of the gamblers, the dense throng that ever sauntered in the narrow aisles. At the lower end was a platform on which musicians played droning tunes on hurdy-gurdies, and Mexican girls, who looked like devils, danced. In the middle of the platform, awaiting the counters of the patrons of the bar, one woman sat always. She was French, and dark, and handsome, and weighed three hundred pounds. Dressing such a person was expensive in those days of incredible prices, and that room was very warm; she wore but a yard or two of silk somewhere about the belt.

Thorpe often sat and watched the faces of the gamblers: the larger number were gently born, and more than one told him that he had been a schoolmaster, a college professor, a clergyman, a lawyer, a doctor--all had failed, or had been ambitious for quicker betterment, and drifted to the golden land, there to feel the full weight of their own incompetence. They came there night after night, and when they had no money to gamble with they sauntered with the throng, or leaned heavily against the n.o.ble pillars which supported the ceiling. Thorpe afterward often wondered what had become of them. It is doubtful if there is a living soul who knows.

Occasionally Thorpe picked up a heap of woman in the street, put it in a carriage, and saw it safely to a night's lodging. Sometimes the woman mumbled feeble grat.i.tude, as often cursed him because he would not give her drink. One night, when rambling about alone, he knocked down a man who was beating a pretty young Mexican woman, then collared and carried him off to the calaboose. The girl died, and a few days later he went to the court-house to testify. The small room was packed; the jurors were huddled in a corner, where they not only listened to the testimony, but were obliged to talk out their verdict, there being no other accommodation.

The trial was raced through in San Francisco style, but lasted several hours. Thorpe sat it out. There was no testimony but his and that of the coroner; but the lawyer and the district-attorney tilted with animus and vehemence. When they had concluded, the judge rose, stretched himself, and turned to the jury.