arge sum of money unwisely,--a habit she had. He might be
detained some weeks. Magdalena, on the whole, was glad to have him gone
for a while. She wanted to think about him undisturbed, and she wanted
to get used to Helena and her exactions while his demands were abstract:
she loved so hard that she must rub the edge off her delight in having
Helena again, or the two would tear her in twain.

She found the sadness of missing him very pleasurable,--feeling sure of
his return; also the painful thrill every morning when the postman
knocked. And to sit in retrospect of the summer was delicious. There may
have been flaws in its present; there were none in its past. Her
ambition to write was dormant. A woman's brain in love is like a garden
planted with one flower. There may be room for a weed or two, but for
none other of the floral kingdom.

Trennahan had given her more than one glimpse of his past, and it had
appalled without horrifying or repulsing her. Her sympathy had been
swift and unerring. She realised that Trennahan had come to California
at a critical point in his moral life, and that his complete
regeneration depended on his future happiness. He had pointed this out
as a weakness, but the fact was all that concerned her. Whatever mists
there might be between her perceptions and the great abstractions of
life, love had sharpened all that love demanded and pointed them
straight at all in Trennahan that he wished her to know. She was awed by
the tremendous responsibility, but confident that she was equal to it;
for did she not love him wholly, and had he not chosen her, by the light
of his great experience, out of all women? She would walk barefooted on
Arctic snows or accept any other ordeal that came her way, but she would
make him happy.

Suddenly she remembered that she had received a brief dictated note from
her aunt that morning, asking her to pack and send to Santa Barbara a
painting of the Virgin which hung in her old apartments: she wished to
present it to the Mission. Mr. Polk had closed his house a year before
and taken up his permanent abode with the Yorbas, but his Chinese
major-domo was in charge. Magdalena reflected that it was not necessary
to bother her uncle, who had seemed ill and restless of late; the
Chinaman could attend to the matter.

She went downstairs and through the gardens to the adjoining house. The
weeds grew high behind it; the windows were dusty; the side door at
which she rang ne