San Ramon to me is a hole. . . . Yes," she went on deliberately,
"I know well what you are going to say. I have _you_: but I want
something more--something I have always wanted and, it seems to me,
every woman always wants--something beyond the sky-line. In Sydney,
now--"

"You'll find there's a sky-line waiting for you at Sydney," said
Farrell; "as like to this one as two peas--and just as impossible to
get beyond"--which mayn't seem very good grammar, but is how he said
it. "Now to me a sky-line's a sky-line--just something to have you
standing against."

"You shall have a kiss for that, _caballero_--in a moment," she
purred, and slanted the binoculars down to bear on the beach. "Only
one passenger," she announced.

"Usual inspector, no doubt," said Farrell, rolling a cigarette.

"Ye-es--by the look of him. . . . Oh, there's Ylario, all right,
talking to the boatman! . . . He must be a stranger, I think--by the
way he's staring up at the town."

"Ylario was bred and born here; of uncertain parents, to be sure--"

She laughed. "Foolish! . . . I meant the inspector, of course."

"What's he like?" asked Farrell. "Report."

She lowered the glass, twisted the screw of it idly, and returned to
her hammock-chair, beside which she set it down on the veranda floor.

"Now I'll make a confession to you," she said, picking up her guitar
and throwing her body back in the chair. "I love you," she said.
"When you are close, and alone with me, my heart feels as if it could
melt into yours. . . . No, don't get up: you shall have your kiss, in
good time. But when you--what shall I say?--when you _all-white_ men
are at all far off, or when many of you are together, I cannot well
distinguish. . . . Ah, pardon me, beloved! Haven't you had that
trouble with people of other races than your own--among a crowd of
Japanese, say? And the shepherds on the mountains behind here--have
you not wondered how they can know every sheep in a flock of many
hundred?"

Farrell was on his feet by this time, and in something of a passion.
"Am I, then," he stammered out; "--am I, then, so like any of the
others, up at Engelbaum's?"

"Calm yourself, O beloved," said Santa, brushing her finger-nails,
gipsy-wise and soft as butterflies, over, the strings of her guitar.
"Calm yourself, and hearken. You are all the world to me, and you
know it. Yet there is something--something I could explain to you
better, maybe, if I knew English bett