t up. Nobody ever said no to me."

We wound up a hot hillside among tangled masses of jasmine, in which
here and there were set star-like golden flowers, whose gardenia-like
perfume mixed with the resinous aromatic smell of the long-needle
pines. I rode a little behind, on purpose, for I love to see a pretty
woman turn her head and look backward across her shoulder. She has no
pose more charming, unless it be when she stands before the "laughing
mirror" and lifts her hands to her hair.

"I have often wondered," I said, "how you happened to marry Fulton.
But now I understand. It was because you couldn't say no to anybody,
and yet he couldn't by any possible chance have been the first to ask.
What has become of the first poor fellow to whom you were unable to say
no? . . . And all the others?"

She looked back at me over her shoulder, her eyebrows lifted in an
effort of memory, which, with a mischievous laugh, she presently
abandoned.

"Why," she said, "as far as I know: 'One flew east and one flew west
and one flew over the cuckoo's nest.'" I wish I could convey by words
the lilt of her clear, fearless, boyish voice, the sparkle of mischief
and daring in her eyes, and deep beneath, like treasures in the sea,
that look of steadfastness, of praying, that made you wonder if she was
really as happy and as carefree as she seemed to be, and not some loyal
martyr upon the altar of matrimony.

To look at, she was but a child in her teens, slender and virginal, and
yet I had it from Fulton himself that her babies had weighed nine
pounds apiece and that she had nursed them both. "She looks down," he
said, "with contempt, on bottle babies."

He was just coming in from golf, with the smug smile of one who has
played a good round, on his face. His buggy boy, Cornelius Twombly, a
black imp of twelve, who carried a razor in his hip pocket, wore also
the smug look of one who has caddied to victory, and won certain
nickels and dimes from another caddie upon the main and minor issues of
the match.

As Fulton climbed out of his rickety, clattering runabout, Mrs. Fulton
slipped from her smart pony, and they met with an honest kiss, like
lovers long parted, and at once each began to tell the other all about
everything.

[Illustration: "They met with an honest kiss, like lovers long parted."]

"If they love each other like that," I thought, "why doesn't he always
ride with her, or why doesn't she always play golf with him?"