ng for one of those
inaugural chapters in mating, half appreciated at the time, that
glimmer as a sort of morning twilight on mountain tops over the mild
undulations of matrimony. The moon rode without a masking cloud across
the ambiguous night blue of the California sky, a blue that looks like
the fire of strange elements, where the stars glow like silver coals,
and out of whose depths intense shadows of blue and black fall; shadows
in which all the terrestrial world seems to float and recombine, where
houses are ghosts of ancient selves and men but the eidola of forgotten
dust. To-night the little estate of Juan Moraga, the most isolated and
eastern of the settlement, surrounded by its high white wall, looked as
unreal and formless as the blue oval of water and black trees behind
it, but Rezanov knew that it enfolded warm and palpitating womanhood
and was steeped in the sweetness of Castilian roses.

The riders, who had taken a path far to the east of the Mission
dismounted and tied their horses among the willows, then, in their dark
cloaks but a part of the shadows, stole toward the wall designed to
impress hostile tribes rather than to resist onslaught; at the first
warning the settlement invariably fled to the church, where walls were
massive and windows high.

In three of Moraga's four walls was a grille, or wicket of slender iron
bars, whence the open could be swept with glass, or gun at a pinch; and
toward the grille looking eastward went Rezanov as swiftly as the
uneven ground would permit. As Concha watched him gather form in the
moonlight and saw him jerk his cloak off impatiently, she flung her
soft body against the wall and shook the bars with her strong little
hands. But when he faced her she was erect and smiling; in a sudden
uprush of spirits, almost indifferent. She wore a white gown and a
rose in her hair. A rosebush as dense as an arbor spread its prickly
arms between herself and the windows of the house.

"Good-evening," she whispered.

Rezanov gave the grill an angry shake. (Santiago had considerately
retired.) "Come out," he said peremptorily, "or let me in."

"There is but one gate, senor, and that is directly in front of the
house door, that stands open--"

"Then I shall get over the wall--"

"Madre de Dios! You would leave your fine clothes and more on the
thorns. My cousin planted those roses not for ornament, but to let the
blood of defiant lovers. Not one has come twice--"