It was a place and an hour made for love.

III

THE ANNIVERSARY

They did not dine in the house, though one of the show rooms was a huge dining-hall like a glorified refectory in an old Spanish mission.  After the beginning of April, and sometimes long before, Carmen seldom took a meal indoors, unless she was attacked by one of her fierce fits of depression, and had a whim to hate the sun.

She and Nick mounted the steps, passed the fountain which spouted diamond spray through a round head made of some flowering water-plant, went on round a corner, Carmen’s dress brushing fallen camellia petals or pink shells of broken roses, and so came to another veranda.  This was pergola as well.  It had no roof but beams of old Spanish chestnut, so draped with wistaria and roses that the whole out-of-doors room was canopied with leaves and hanging clusters of flowers.  Only a faint filtering of sun or moonshine could steal through, and such rays as penetrated seemed to be dyed pink and purple by draining through the flowers.

Suspended from the beams were big iridescent pearl-shells, known in southern California as “abalone,” and in the rainbow-tinted half-globes gleamed electric lights, subdued by dull gold glass; but neither these nor the tall shaded lamps on the low wall of the terrace, nor the hidden electric bulbs in the fountain basin, were allowed to shine out yet.  As Carmen said, she liked to talk by moonlight; and now, over in the east, behind magnolia and palm trees, the moon had been born while the sun died in the west.

If it had been her wedding-night dinner Carmen could not have been more careful in ordering the different dishes and planning the decorations of the table.  Usually whether she were alone or had guests (as she had sometimes, though “society” had never taken her up), she left everything to her Chinese head-cook, who was a worthy rival of any Parisian chef; and the beautifying of her table to the artistic Japanese youth whose one business in life was to think out new flower-combinations.  This, however, was not only the anniversary of the day which had given her freedom, but she hoped it might be one to remember for a sweeter reason.  Besides, Nick Hilliard was to be enchanted, to be made conscious of himself and her, as the only man, the only woman, worth thinking of in the world.

The air was sweet with the fragrance of orange-blossoms, and the deep-red velvet roses which were Carmen’s own flowers.  Nick was a water drinker by preference and because he was an open-air man, also because it had been necessary for him to set an example; but to-night Carmen made him sip a little iced champagne, and she drank to the success of his first visit East since boyhood—­to his safe and speedy home-coming.

“Because this is home, Nick; your home,” she said.  “It would kill me if you saw any place you liked better, and if you made up your mind that you wanted to sell out and live in New York.”