er forefathers were just a parcel of adventurers crazed
with the lust of gold, and with no sense of any future beyond the
present."

Isabel leaned forward eagerly. "You have been thinking about San
Francisco!" she exclaimed, triumphantly. "The old Otis blood is
beginning to wake up! Hooray!"

Gwynne laughed outright, and for the first time without resentment; he
was tired of having California "rammed down his throat." Isabel's eyes
were dancing with so purely youthful and feminine a triumph that he
could not but feel indulgent.

"I am growing reconciled to my lot. Here I am and here I remain."

"Yes, you are much happier," said Isabel, softly. She half closed her
eyes and looked a trifle older. "It worried me dreadfully at first to
know that you were unhappy, and that it was my fault."

"Unhappy!" exclaimed Gwynne, reddening haughtily. "I have not been
mooning about like a homesick ass--"

"Oh, your outside was as tranquil as your pride demanded--and it was
splendid! But I couldn't help knowing--feeling. A thousand little things
appeal so directly to a woman's intuitions."

"Indeed! I am delighted to learn that you possess the common intuitions
of a woman."

"Am I unwomanly? Masculine?" asked Isabel, anxiously.

"Not in the ordinary sense; but you are much too strong. No woman should
be as strong--as, well--as psychically independent as you are. It is as
flagrant a usurpation of prerogative as a pretty complexion on a man."

"I only say one prayer: 'Give me strength. Give me strength.'"

"For what, in heaven's name? What use have you for so much strength? You
have forsworn matrimony. You disclaim the intention of going forth and
entering the great battle of the intellects--having, as you say, no
talents. You have isolated yourself from love, so you need no uncommon
supply of strength to meet suffering. You will always have money enough,
and you appear to have been born with the gift of making it. Even if you
elect to be the leader of fashion in San Francisco, your equipment need
not be of unadulterated steel. But I cannot fancy why you entertain any
such ambition."

"That is the least of my ambition--although I intend to become the most
notable woman in San Francisco, not only because I must gratify a
healthy natural ambition in some way, and because I want my life to have
a sufficiency of incident in it, but because it is a part of my general
scheme."

"What is this precious scheme?"

"You would not u