d but not savage, the soft wildness of an
uninhabited southern shore. For no one lived on Patricio, save where,
opposite East Angels, the old Ruiz house stood on its lapsed
land--lapsed from the better tilling of the century before.

The Rev. Mr. Moore had come gambolling back, striking actively hither
and thither with his net, still pursuing the same butterfly. The
butterfly--at his leisure--flew inland; and then Mr. Moore gave up the
chase, and joined Mrs. Harold calmly, seeming not in the least out of
breath, his face, indeed, so serious that she received the impression
that while his legs might have been gambolling, his thoughts had perhaps
been employed with his next Sunday's sermon; he had had an
introspective, mildly controversial air as he leaped.

Garcia and Winthrop walked on in advance. The beach waved in and out in
long scallops, and when they had entered the second they found
themselves alone, the point behind intervening between them and their
companions.

"What a dreadfully lonely place this beach is, after all!" said Garda,
pausing and looking southward with a half-appreciative, half-disturbed
little shudder.

"Not lonely; primeval," answered Winthrop. "Don't you like it? I am sure
you do; take time to think."

"Oh, I don't want any time. Yes, I like it in one way, in one way it's
beautiful. One could be perfectly lazy here forever, and I should like
that. As for the loneliness, I suppose we should not mind it after a
while--so long as we could be together."

Before Winthrop could reply to this, "Suppose we race," she went on,
looking at him with sudden animation. And she began to sway herself
slightly to and fro as she walked, as though keeping time to music.

"I think you mean suppose we dance," he answered. She had soon deserted
the mood that chimed in with his own; still, he had not misjudged her,
she had it in her to comprehend the charm of an existence which should
be primitive, far from the world, that simple free life towards which
the thoughts of imaginative men turn sometimes with such inexpressible
longing, but to whose attractions feminine minds in general are said to
be closed. The men of imagination seldom carry, are seldom able to
carry, their aspirations to a practical reality; that makes no
difference in their appreciation of the woman who can comprehend the
beauty of the dream. Here was a girl who, under the proper influences,
would be able to take up such a life and enjoy it; t