, the thing was to get away--away, not only from California, but
even from America--as quickly as possible, it hardly mattered how, for
luckily--the one piece of luck she had left!--there was plenty of money.
And the ranch could take care of itself.

The day Carmen reached San Francisco a ship happened to be sailing for
Japan. She was able to engage a cabin, and went on board almost at the
last moment. Among others who arrived very late was a bent old man, with a
worn face which had once been handsome. Carmen did not see him till the
third day out. Then, from the deck sacred to second-class passengers, a
pair of dark blue, red-rimmed eyes looked up at her as she leaned
listlessly on the rail, gazing down.

Madame Vestris had seen in the crystal a man standing beside her, a man in
shadow. After all, it was not Nick Hilliard but Simeon Harp.

XXX

THE MAKING OF A GENTLEMAN

One evening, when July was beginning, Nick Hilliard sat on the veranda of
his plain little house, which he had grown to love. Swinging back and
forth in a big rocking-chair, he smoked a pipe and thought very hard. As
he thought and smoked, he looked dreamily at a young owl in a big cage;
the owl he had sent home from Paso Robles.

If he had been thinking about it, he could have seen, dark against the
pale fire of the desert sky, the source of his fortune; the great gusher
throwing up its black spout of oil, like tons upon tons of coal. For the
famous Lucky Star oil supply showed no sign yet of giving out, though it
had been playing like a huge geyser for many months; and already, since
its mysterious birth, many younger brothers had been born, small and
insignificant comparatively, but money-makers. If Nick's thought had not
drawn down a curtain in front of his eyes, he must have seen, across a
blue lake and a black desert created by a rain of oil, a forest of
derricks, like a scattered group of burnt fir-trees with low-hung bare
branches. But instead of these his mind's eye saw a new road, shaded by
walnuts and oaks, that marched in long straight lines between rough
pasture and irrigated land. He saw in the tree-shadows a yellow motor-car
drawn up by the side of the road, and in it a beautiful, pale girl,
hatless, with disordered golden hair and a torn white dress. He saw a man
with the girl, and heard her say that it would have been better to die
than let herself care for him.

"Yet she _did_ care for me," Nick told himself obstinately