e, and Billy the "assistant" climbed into the
seat next the chauffeur's.

Theo availed herself of the opportunity to tell what she had heard about
Nick and Mrs. Gaylor, with embroideries of her own.

The air was balm of a thousand flowers, but for Angela it was no longer
"Parfait d'Amour." The two battleships had long ago finished their speed
trial; and trails of floating kelp lay like golden sea-serpents asleep
under the blue ripple of the sea. Everything was very beautiful. But it
was not yesterday!

In the town with the Mission still distant, she began to feel the
"foreignness" of Santa Barbara. The streets had Spanish names, and the
trees seemed musical, as she had thought that trees seemed in the South of
Europe; as if they had heard and seen all the happiness of history, and
had set them to music with their branches. Pretty girls rode bareheaded,
with sunburned men in sombreros, just outside the straggling town, between
hedges of roses that made boundaries for bungalows.

The beauty of the world sang a song in Angela's ears, with the rushing
breeze the motor made; the wind in the trees, the flashing lights and
shadows on the mountains. Clear-cut, lovely peaks sprang toward a sky that
was like fire opal with turquoise glowing blue behind it. Still, this was
not yesterday! The song of the world's beauty did not seem meant
personally for her, as it had then.

Piles of grain in the fields were like plumed, golden helmets, laid down
in rows to await the heads of resting warriors. The California oaks,
different from all other oaks, were classic in shape as Greek temples
sacred to forest deities, standing against a background of indigo sea. But
Miss Dene would talk.

Theodora, in her books, made a speciality of describing the emotional
souls of women, her favourite female thermometers being usually at
freezing or boiling point--never temperate. Descriptions of scenery she
"couldn't do," and what she called "landscape gazing" bored her. She was
more interested in people, and big towns, than in wide spaces where Nature
tried to lecture her. But because Angela admired the country she admired
it, too, more audibly than Angela.

They saved the Mission for the last. Nick had set his heart on showing it
to Mrs. May at sunset. As for Theo, though she said so much, he knew by
instinct that it was not she who cared for the beauty of the magnolia
hedges, the hay-gilded meadows, and the dark oaks that blotted the gold.
He fe