es with
your boat, and even your launch. I never enjoyed myself more--after such
close study, and all the rest of it, I suppose. I must say you don't
look very fit. You are pale instead of white, and--well--cross. Judging
from those models of literary elegance and Christian charity, the San
Francisco weekly society sheets--with which I whiled away that infernal
train journey--you have been feted like visiting royalty, photographed
by the foremost in his art--which would appear to be the equivalent of
painted for the Academy--and your family history seems to have been
written up from old files, with even more picturesqueness than
accuracy--"

"I wish you would keep still. You didn't talk half so much in England. I
shall hate you if you become wholly American."

"I am a born egotist. Ask my mother. Or my long-suffering friends and
constituents. You did all the talking at Capheaton--or gave me a wide
berth. But here my mother neither talks nor listens--" He paused
suddenly and lowered his voice. "Is anything the matter with my mother,
do you think? I never saw any one so changed. Do you suppose she hates
California and is staying here only on my account?--I have offered more
than once to pay her bills; and she is used to them, anyway. For
heaven's sake persuade her to go back and enjoy herself in her own
fashion. I really don't need her--haven't time. And in spite of your
liberal thorns and maddening incomprehensibilities, you can always put
homesickness to flight. Sometimes I think she is ill, and then again she
looks as fit as ever."

"She has developed nerves. All women get them sometime or other. And
there is a certain order of women with whom beauty and fascination are a
vocation. When those pass they hate life."

"What rot. No doubt she's a bit off her feed and restless. Probably the
climate doesn't suit her. Heaven knows it is nervous enough. But I don't
pretend to understand women. What's up with you? Didn't you enjoy being
a belle, after all?"

"I was not a belle. I was a distinct failure."

"What?" Gwynne sat up and forward. "If you want to psychologize, fire
away. It always interests me."

"I have no intention of psychologizing. I haven't had time to think. But
I do know that a life lived all on the surface--and at lightning
speed--doesn't suit me a bit." She gave him a rapid sketch of her week.
"I was with them, but not of them; no doubt of that. Old Mr. Toole told
me one day that I was a dreamer, and