knew whether she were glad or sorry. She
wished that she had the courage to ask her to keep him away from Menlo
Park this summer.

The other girls moved down, bringing many guests, and she saw them
daily; habit is not broken in a moment. They passed through Fair Oaks as
usual on their afternoon drives, stopping for a chat; in their
char-a-bancs or on the verandah. It was some time before they discovered
the changes in the Yorba household, and when they did they merely
shrugged their shoulders at the old don's eccentricities. The big
parlours were certainly to be regretted; but there were other parlours
that were not half bad, and it was terribly up-hill work entertaining
Don Roberto. They were profoundly sorry for Magdalena, and were so
insistent in their demands that she should spend much of her time with
them that she found her solitude far less complete than she had hoped.
But Helena and Trennahan were not to come down until the first of July;
they had gone with Colonel Belmont to the Yosemite, Geysers and Big
Trees.

XVIII

Trennahan in that first month thought little of Magdalena. He hardly
knew whether he were happy or not; he certainly was intoxicated. Helena
was both impassioned and shy, a companion to whom words were hardly a
necessary medium for thought, and magnificently uncertain of mood.
Moreover, whether riding a donkey up the steep dusty grades of the
Yosemite, or half veiled in a mist of steam, reeking of Hell, or
standing with wondering eyes and parted lips among the colossal trees of
Calaveras, she was always beautiful. And Trennahan worshipped her beauty
with the strength of a passion which had sprung from a long and
recuperative sleep. That he was twice her age mattered nothing to him
now. Nothing mattered but that she was to be wholly his.

The morning after his return to Menlo he awoke with a confused sense
that he should be late for his morning ride with Magdalena. He laughed
as his senses rattled into place, but he sighed just after; and both the
laugh and the sigh were Magdalena's, grim as the former may have been.
That had been a time of peace and perfect content, and he could never
forget it, not though he lived long years of unimaginable bliss with
Helena--which he probably would not. A part of his life, limited and
stunted a part as it was, belonged irrevocably to Magdalena. He
concluded, after some hard thinking, that it was his best part. He had
given her something of his soul