It was almost deserted, and Over and Catalina walked slowly towards the Capilla Mayor, through the rich brown silence of the nave, whispering occasionally, but overpowered by the forest of shafts uplifting an immensity of vaulting before which the eye reeled. The centuries of carving, as various as the peoples that had come and gone, crystallizing even the broken voice of the Moor, melted into a harmony comparable only, said Catalina, to the wonders of a Californian mountain-forest—of redwood and pine, madroño and oak, and giant ferns as delicate as the lace of her mantilla. There were high vaultings, too, where the sun never ripened the moss on the earth, and endless cryptograms wrought before the hand of man had taken the message of the gods.
Over replied, promptly: “I don’t believe half you have told me about California. Next year I shall obtain leave of absence and visit it—that is, if you will be my cicerone.”
“Why not this year?”
“Shall I?”
“It is all the same to me, but I may not be there next year. I need Europe. Of course, I know that I am a sort of cowboy.”
“Ah!” He hardly knew whether to be gratified or not. “Don’t desert your ranch altogether—nor surrender all the individuality it has given you. If you should be the great lady in Europe and ranch-girl at home—what a fascinating combination!”
“Well, I can be anything I choose, and on five minutes’ notice, too.”
“I am sure of it—but which is the real you? I think I know—then I am all at sea.”
She gave him another swift, upward glance, but she replied, sedately: “The worst, of course. That is what people always decide when a person suddenly reveals himself in a bad light. Twenty other sides may have been exhibited, but it is the revelation of the worst that always inspires the phrase, ‘At last he has shown himself in his true colors.’”
“Then you are too philosophical to condemn Mrs. Moulton utterly?”