had his pity. He knew what they suffered, and he
could not go with Mrs. May, in Falconer's car.

Nevertheless he beat down the desire to dissuade her from the trip.

"You oughtn't to miss McCloud River," he forced himself to say.

"I'll see," said Angela. "It's nice not to make up one's mind, but just to
enjoy the minute."

"Are you enjoying the minute?"

"Yes."

He was rewarded. For this minute was his. They were spinning along the
coast road, between sea and meadow, with the salt breeze in their faces.
The red-gold earth rose and fell in gracious curves, like the breasts of a
sleeping Indian girl, and now and then an azure inlet of the sea lit up a
meadow as eyes light a face. In the distance, mountains seemed to float
like spirit guardians of hill-children; and desert dunes billowed through
irrigated garden oases, like rivers of gold boiling up from magic mines.

Nick pointed out the two little mountains named after Louis the Bishop,
and told Angela tales of the country, of the people, and of the little
towns with Spanish names and faces, which gave her always that haunting
impression of the Old World. Some of the stories were her father's
stories, and she liked Hilliard the better for knowing them.

They had both forgotten Miss Sara Wilkins, who had "stopped off" at Santa
Barbara because all her life she had wanted to see the place. But just at
that moment, on her way to Bakersfield, she happened to be thinking of
them both.

At last the car plunged into a maze of folding hills, like giant dunes.
The motor road was woven in twisted strands while the railway overhead
strode across the gaps between height and height, on a vast trestle that
might have been built for an army of Martians. Rock-crested hills rose
gray in the sun above the soft night of oak forests; and as the road
ascended, its ribbons were looped from mountain to mountain like the
thrown lasso of a cowboy.

"Paso Robles means 'Pass of the Oaks,'" said Nick, as they came into a
stretch of billowing country where immense trees shadowed the summer gold
of meadows.

"Shall we go first to the Mission of San Miguel?" Nick asked. "Or are you
tired, and shall I take you to the hotel now?"

"I'm not tired," said Angela. She did not want this day to end yet.

"We'll hit the trail for the Mission, then," said Nick, "and see the
sunset, as we did from Santa Barbara."

"Can this be as beautiful?" Angela asked. "Surely not?"

"You, maybe, won't thin