a stone bench against the side
wall of the Mission, near the door from which they had just issued,
and sat down, Sarria lighting a cigar, Vanamee rolling and smoking
cigarettes in Mexican fashion.

All about them widened the vast calm night. All the stars were out. The
moon was coming up. There was no wind, no sound. The insistent flowing
of the fountain seemed only as the symbol of the passing of time, a
thing that was understood rather than heard, inevitable, prolonged. At
long intervals, a faint breeze, hardly more than a breath, found its way
into the garden over the enclosing walls, and passed overhead, spreading
everywhere the delicious, mingled perfume of magnolia blossoms, of
mignonette, of moss, of grass, and all the calm green life silently
teeming within the enclosure of the walls.

From where he sat, Vanamee, turning his head, could look out underneath
the pear trees to the north. Close at hand, a little valley lay between
the high ground on which the Mission was built, and the line of low
hills just beyond Broderson Creek on the Quien Sabe. In here was the
Seed ranch, which Angele's people had cultivated, a unique and beautiful
stretch of five hundred acres, planted thick with roses, violets,
lilies, tulips, iris, carnations, tube-roses, poppies, heliotrope--all
manner and description of flowers, five hundred acres of them, solid,
thick, exuberant; blooming and fading, and leaving their seed or slips
to be marketed broadcast all over the United States. This had been the
vocation of Angele's parents--raising flowers for their seeds. All over
the country the Seed ranch was known. Now it was arid, almost dry, but
when in full flower, toward the middle of summer, the sight of these
half-thousand acres royal with colour--vermilion, azure, flaming
yellow--was a marvel. When an east wind blew, men on the streets of
Bonneville, nearly twelve miles away, could catch the scent of this
valley of flowers, this chaos of perfume.

And into this life of flowers, this world of colour, this atmosphere
oppressive and clogged and cloyed and thickened with sweet odour, Angele
had been born. There she had lived her sixteen years. There she had
died. It was not surprising that Vanamee, with his intense, delicate
sensitiveness to beauty, his almost abnormal capacity for great
happiness, had been drawn to her, had loved her so deeply.

She came to him from out of the flowers, the smell of the roses in her
hair of gold, that hu