, warm and languid, palpitant with the hush of
the changing season, a California Indian summer day, with hazy sun and
wandering wisps of breeze that did not stir the slumber of the air. Filmy
purple mists, that were not vapors but fabrics woven of color, hid in the
recesses of the hills. San Francisco lay like a blur of smoke upon her
heights. The intervening bay was a dull sheen of molten metal, whereon
sailing craft lay motionless or drifted with the lazy tide. Far
Tamalpais, barely seen in the silver haze, bulked hugely by the Golden
Gate, the latter a pale gold pathway under the westering sun. Beyond,
the Pacific, dim and vast, was raising on its sky-line tumbled
cloud-masses that swept landward, giving warning of the first blustering
breath of winter.

The erasure of summer was at hand. Yet summer lingered, fading and
fainting among her hills, deepening the purple of her valleys, spinning a
shroud of haze from waning powers and sated raptures, dying with the calm
content of having lived and lived well. And among the hills, on their
favorite knoll, Martin and Ruth sat side by side, their heads bent over
the same pages, he reading aloud from the love-sonnets of the woman who
had loved Browning as it is given to few men to be loved.

But the reading languished. The spell of passing beauty all about them
was too strong. The golden year was dying as it had lived, a beautiful
and unrepentant voluptuary, and reminiscent rapture and content freighted
heavily the air. It entered into them, dreamy and languorous, weakening
the fibres of resolution, suffusing the face of morality, or of judgment,
with haze and purple mist. Martin felt tender and melting, and from time
to time warm glows passed over him. His head was very near to hers, and
when wandering phantoms of breeze stirred her hair so that it touched his
face, the printed pages swam before his eyes.

"I don't believe you know a word of what you are reading," she said once
when he had lost his place.

He looked at her with burning eyes, and was on the verge of becoming
awkward, when a retort came to his lips.

"I don't believe you know either. What was the last sonnet about?"

"I don't know," she laughed frankly. "I've already forgotten. Don't let
us read any more. The day is too beautiful."

"It will be our last in the hills for some time," he announced gravely.
"There's a storm gathering out there on the sea-rim."

The book slipped from his han