ingenerate, perhaps, with the power to turn earth into heaven.

He had wondered humorously if he were fallen in love, but, although he
retained little faith in the activities of the heart after youth, he
was beginning seriously to consider the expedience of marrying Concha
Arguello. He had not intended to marry again, and it was this old and
passionate love of personal freedom that alone held him back, for
nothing would be so advantageous to the Russian colonies in their
present crisis as a strong individual alliance with California. Concha
Arguello was the famous daughter of its first subject, and with the
powerful friends she would bring to her husband, the consummation of
ends dearer to his heart than aught on earth would be a matter of
months instead of years. And he thrilled with pride as he thought of
Concha in St. Petersburg. Two years of court life and she would be one
of the greatest ladies in Europe. That he could win her he believed,
and without undue vanity. He had much to offer an ambitious girl
conscious of her superiority to the men of this province of Spain, and
chafing at the prospect of a lifetime in a bountiful desert. His only
hesitation lay in his own doubt if she were worth the loss of his
freedom, and all that word involved to a man of his position and
adventurous spirit.

He shrugged his shoulders at this argument; he had walked off some of
his ill-humor, and reverted willingly to a theme that alone had given
him satisfaction during the past few days. At the same time he made a
motion as if flinging aside an old burden.

"It is time for such nonsense to end," he thought contemptuously. "And
in truth these three years should have wrought such changes in me I
doubt I should have patience for an hour of the old trifling. My
greatest need from this time on, I fancy, is work. I could never be
idle a month again. And when a man is in love with work--and
power--and has passed forty--does he want a constant companion? That
is the point. At my time of life power exercises the most irresistible
and lasting of all fascinations. A man that wins it has little left
for a woman."

He had reached the summit of the rocky outpost; the highest of the
hills where the peninsula turned abruptly to the south, and,
scrupulously refraining from a downward glance at the Battery of Yerba
Buena, stood looking out over the bay to the eastern mountains: dark,
almost formless, wrapped in the intense and menac