Mirador. No
wonder old Drake wants to get it fixed up again! The way it is now, it
spoils the look of the whole property."

The "Fay place" gave a first impression of having been an orange
plantation transformed into a vast garden. There were acres and acres
of land, Denin could not guess how many. In the midst of orange trees
in fruit and blossom, and pepper trees shedding coral, and tall palm
trees with long gray beards which were last year's fronds, stood the
big, rambling pink bungalow that had been Barbara's home. Its tiled
roof and wide loggias were just visible from the road; but the Mirador,
to which the driver pointed, was in plain sight. Denin's heart bounded.
He almost expected to see a young girl with smoke-blue eyes and
copper-beech hair (it had been red in those days, she'd told him) open
one of the shuttered windows and look out with a smile.

Once, while she and her mother were staying at Gorston Old Hall, he had
tried to teach Barbara chess. In the midst of a game which she hoped to
win, she suddenly saw herself facing defeat. "Let's begin again, and
play it all over!" she had cried out, laughing.

Ah, if they could do that now: begin again, and play the game all over!

Well, the ghost of John Denin could begin to play hero with the ghost
of Barbara Fay's childhood, when he came to have his home in her old
playhouse. He knew that this must and should be his home, now that he
had come and seen the place and felt its influence even more subtly
than he had thought to feel it. He could not get through his shorn life
anywhere else.

The Mirador was distant at least four acres from the house. It too was
pink, like the parent bungalow, or it had once been pink, before the
fire which destroyed the addition for servants at the back had marred
the rose color of its plastered adobe walls. A roof of Spanish tiles
dropped low like a visor, giving cover to the balcony of the upper
story; and the floor of that balcony roofed the one below. On each of
these balconies only one window--which was also a door--looked out; but
it was a huge window, with green exterior shutters; and the stout,
square columns of the two verandas were almost hidden with roses,
passion-flower, and convolvulus which had either survived the fire or
grown up since. Though the front was so nearly intact, from each side
of the little house could be seen the blackened wreck of burnt beams;
and to screen the parent bungalow from any possible gli