astery that she longed to kick him as she blushed to recall
she had done once before. She rubbed her arms instinctively, as if she
still felt the furious pressure of his fingers, and when the memory of
another sort of pressure abruptly presented itself she hurriedly bathed
her eyes and went out on her horse.

VII

For a week she was so moody and irascible that Abraham twice gave
warning, Old Mac artfully took to his bed with rheumatism, and only the
inexcitable Chuma was unconcerned. She rode her horse nearly to death,
snubbed Anabel--whose children were down with the measles--over the
telephone, and even boxed the ears of a dilatory hen. At the end of the
week a sudden appreciation of her likeness to a cross old maid
frightened her, and time and the weather completed the cure. Her
ill-humor, which had scourged through every avenue of her being, took
itself off so completely that it seemed to announce it had had enough of
her and would return no more.

And the spring came with a rush. The hills burst into buttercups, "blue
eyes," yellow and purple lupins, the heavy pungent gold-red poppy. The
young green of weeping willows and pepper-trees looked indescribably
delicate against the hard blue sky. Rosewater was a great park, all her
little squares and gardens, and long rambling streets, set thick with
camellias, roses, orange-trees heavy with fruit, immense acacia-trees
loaded with fragrant yellow powdery blossoms. Main Street was clean
again, and so were the farmers and their teams at the hitching-rails;
the girls were beginning to wear white at church on Sunday, and to walk
about without their hats. The great valley was as green as the hills,
save where the earth had been turned, and one or two almond orchards
were so pink they could be seen a mile away. It was spring in all its
glory, without a taint of summer's heat, or a lingering chill of winter.

In Isabel's garden were many old Castilian rose bushes, that for fifty
years had covered themselves pink with the uninterrupted lustiness of
youth; and their penetrating, yet chaste and elusive fragrance, combined
with the rich heavy perfume of the acacia-tree beside the house, would
have inspired a distiller and blender of scents. The birds sang as if
possessed of a new message; and several of Isabel's prize roosters,
tired of their old harems, flew over the wire-fences and strutted off in
search of adventure, proclaiming their route by loud and boastful
clamo