Gratefully she cuddled his hand to her cheek and implanted upon it a fervent kiss.
“Of course,” she agreed. “Certainement.”
They rolled out Market Street through the heavy evening traffic, and presently were climbing to the crest of Twin Peaks. As the car swept around the last curve and gave a view of the city from the Potrero to the Cliff House snuggled below them, Tamea gasped. A little wisp of fog was creeping in the Golden Gate, but the light, still lingering although the sun had almost set, clothed the city in an amethyst haze that softened its ugly architecture and made of it a thing of superlative beauty. The sweep of blue bay, the islands and the shipping, the departing light heliographed from the western windows of homes on the Alameda County shore, the high green hills on the eastern horizon, all combined to make a picture so impressively beautiful that Tamea, born with the appreciation of beauty so distinct a characteristic of her mother’s race, sighed with the shock of it. Graves had stopped the car and the girl gazed her fill in silence.
“I wanted to bring you up here and prove to you that ours is not an ugly land, although not so beautiful perhaps as Riva,” Dan explained.
Then they swept down the western slope of Twin Peaks, up the Great Highway along the Pacific shore and home through Golden Gate Park. As was his custom, Dan opened the front door with his latchkey and he and Tamea stepped into the hall.
“You have an hour in which to dress for dinner, child,” he told her. “Ring for Julia. She will help you.”
The girl came close to him, drew his head down on her shoulder and pressed her lips to his ear.
“Yesterday,” she whispered, “was a day of sorrow. It did not seem that I could bear it. But today has been so joyous I have almost forgotten my sorrow; in a week it will be quite gone. To you I am indebted for this great happiness.”
She kissed him rapturously, first on one cheek, then on the other, and Dan reflected that this Gallic form of osculation had evidently been learned from old Gaston of the Beard. How warm and soft her lips were, how fragrant her breath and hair! In the dim light of the hall her marvelous eyes beamed up at him with a light that suddenly set his pulse to pounding wildly. A tremor ran through him.
“You tremble, dear one,” the girl whispered. “You are cold! Ah, but my love shall warm,” and she lifted her lips to his.