How stern the eyes could look—the mouth, how hard! They walked on in silence, down the first terrace, and along the second. No wilderness rioted below, all was pruned and trimmed and primly smiling. In the middle of what Mrs. Gano had been used to call "the Lower Plateau" stood the dancing pavilion, finished that day, all but the outward trappings of flags and lanterns.
"I believe you'd like the house at Oakland." He spoke more gently than before. "There's a garden and a little orange-grove, and the land slopes down to the sea."
"Do you look out on the Golden Gate?" she asked, quickly, and then added, involuntarily: "But, after all, what do I care about that? I want to see people in other lands, and find out what life looks like to them."
"You can do something of the sort later, if you like."
"Oh, later! later! Everybody's said 'later' to me ever since I was born. Who knows whether I'll ever go at all if I don't go now?"
"Ha!" he said, with a flash, "now we have the real reason."
She lowered her eyes and was dumb.
"Will you tell me why, just lately, when you have greater incentive than you ever had before, you seem to have less hope, a weaker hold on life?"
"All imagination," she said, evasively. "Listen to that woodpecker." Her head drooped, dreamily. How pale she looked in the gray light! "He's tapping the old locust-tree under my window, just as he used to—hundreds of years ago—when I was a little girl."
"Val," he said, "you are not like yourself."