ing. I suddenly made up my mind to pay the long-delayed
visit to England, stopping in Paris by the way for frocks. I doubt if I
ever enjoyed anything more than those three weeks in Paris, where I
completely forgot every unpleasant association. It was my first fine
wardrobe, my first opportunity to experience to the full the delight of
clothes. I have felt quite happy here. California is so far from every
other place that it is almost like living on a detached planet. You
forget the rest of the world for months at a time. For days after I
returned I wandered about out-of-doors in a gay irresponsible mood, and
carolled all over the house. Of course it was nothing but the
electricity of the climate and that I was in my own State once more and
took an insane pride in it. You do not even need to be born here for
that; it comes with the inevitable sense of isolation. You will feel it
in time. If I had not known that so certainly I should never have dared
to urge you to come."

Gwynne smiled with a pardonable cynicism; but while he was not unwilling
the conversation should turn upon himself, his curiosity was not
satisfied. The fog had gone and the moon had risen. He could see Isabel
quite plainly. She had turned her head and was gazing out over the great
expanse desolated by the moonlight, and he studied her profile for the
first time, often as he had observed it. To-night with the moonlight on
it and against the dark hills it was almost repellently unmodern in its
sharply cut regularity, the classic modelling of the eye-socket and
chin, the nose with its slight arch. Her hair had fallen from its pins
and hung in a braid, its length concealed by her position, and making
the effect of a queue. She had long since taken off her hat and wrapped
its veil about her head. The veil had slipped and might easily have been
mistaken for a ribbon confining the queue at the base of the head. For
an instant Gwynne's senses swam. He recalled the portraits of their
Revolutionary ancestors in the house on Russian Hill. It might have been
a medallion suspended before him. He drew in his breath; then his eye
fell to the short thin sensitive upper lip, rarely quiet for all her
extraordinary repose; to the full enticing under lip, and the little
black moles. Then his gaze wandered down to the rough shooting-jacket,
to the rubber boots reaching to her waist, and he only restrained
himself from laughing aloud because he feared to rush down the curtai