“I’ve other things to do,” she replied coldly.  “I shall see only the Missions I may happen to pass on this tour.”

“Well, some folks’d ruther save this trip for a weddin’ journey,” Sealman suggested.  “I suppose widows have weddin’ trips, don’t they?” He gazed thoughtfully at the gray coat and gray-veiled motor hat which Angela wore to protect her from the dust.  She sat in front beside the chauffeur for the motion of the car was less there, but she decided that, if she were ever hypnotized into associating with the Model again, she would take the back seat.

“The Missions for mine,” he went on, when his passenger made no reply.  “There’s some prefers the Yosemite, but there’s no motorin’ there.  And if I was a girl I wouldn’t feel married without a motor.  In the Yosemite there’s; so much honeymoonin’, the minute you see a lady with a man you put ’em down for bride and groom.”

Angela had cause to remember this remark later.

“Speakin’ of honeymoons, looks as if there’d been some around here,” the codfish continued chattily.

They were running about through the suburbs of Los Angeles, and if Sealman’s passenger had deigned to answer she would have been compelled to agree.  It was ideal honeymoon-land; a moving picture, painted in colours, seemingly by rival artists of different nations, for the mingling of effects was mysterious as the scenery of dreams.

Just as Angela told herself that it was like Holland in the jewel-box neatness of little streets and little houses—­behold the Riviera, with groups of palms among tropical flowers, and feathery pepper-trees, graceful and large as giant willows!  Then, when she had decided on Italy or Southern France as a simile, far-off, sharp mountain peaks, a dark, grotesquely branching pine in filmy distance, and a doll’s house with a red pointed roof, suggested a sketch on a Japanese fan.

This was a spick-and-span little world for a perpetual honeymoon, and at the entrance of the streets there should have been signs, Angela thought, saying, “No one but brides and grooms need apply.”  It was all distractingly pretty; and though Angela had already admired the big handsome houses of Los Angeles and Pasadena, these rose-bowered bungalows caught her fancy more.  After all, there is a sameness about millionaires’ mansions the whole world over; but here was something new, invented by California.

Cupid himself might have been the architect so daintily was each little dwelling planned for the happiness of two lovers; so, of course, all the women who lived in these houses must be young and beautiful.  All the men must be handsome, and husbands and wives must adore each other.  No creatures old or fat or inclined to be disagreeable would dare come house-hunting here; or if they did come, surely some wise suburban by-law would rule them out!  Once in, as residents, the happy lovers would remain forever young.

“It’s to be Riverside to-morrow, ain’t it?” Sealman inquired, when, full two hours later than she had expected, he brought her back to the door of her hotel.