ntry, she had
always the beauty of bay and hill and sky beyond her window; and there
are certain months in the spring and autumn when San Francisco is as
lovely and brilliant as the southern shores of California. The trades
are hibernating in the caves of the Pacific, and the fogs exist only in
the spray of the ponderous waves. On such days and evenings Magdalena
sat for hours on her little balcony, forgetting her work, dreaming idly.
It was inevitable, in her purely mental and imaginative life, that she
should apprehend in Trennahan the lover again. She wove her own romance
as ardently and consecutively as that of any of her heroines. In time he
would forget Helena; his love for her had been one of those sudden
insane passions of which she had read,--which she tried to depict in her
Southland tales,--and in time it would fall from him, and he would hear
the tinkle of the chain forged in long hours of perfect sympathy. They
would both be older and wiser and more sad: the better, perhaps.
Loneliness and the peculiar circumstances of her life inclined her to
borderland sympathies; she believed that if he died suddenly she should
become immediately aware of the fact.

Her love for Trennahan by no means interfered with her literary
ambitions. All others had failed her; she knew now that with the best of
opportunities she should never have cut a brilliant figure in society.
But she did not care; letters were a far more glorious goal. Helena
adored great military heroes, great imperialists like Clive and
Hastings, even great tyrants like Napoleon. Herself reverenced the great
names in literature, and could think of no destiny so exalted as to be
enrolled among them. And if she succeeded, what would have mattered
these long years of dull loneliness, of denial of all that is dear to
the heart of a girl? Sometimes she even thought the tarrying of
Trennahan mattered little; for there is no tyrant so jealous as Art.

Once she read her stories aloud to her mother; and Mrs. Yorba was
pleased to observe that they were much better than she could have
expected, but that on the whole she preferred "The Duchess." She had
grown quite fond of her daughter, and often sat in her room while she
wrote. The intimacy and isolation of the two women had made it easy and
natural for Magdalena to confide in her mother, but she was forced to
confess that she had not inherited her critical faculty from her
maternal parent. Nevertheless, she was glad