Theo availed herself of the opportunity to tell what she had heard about Nick and Mrs. Gaylor, with embroideries of her own.

The air was balm of a thousand flowers, but for Angela it was no longer “Parfait d’Amour.”  The two battleships had long ago finished their speed trial; and trails of floating kelp lay like golden sea-serpents asleep under the blue ripple of the sea.  Everything was very beautiful.  But it was not yesterday!

In the town with the Mission still distant, she began to feel the “foreignness” of Santa Barbara.  The streets had Spanish names, and the trees seemed musical, as she had thought that trees seemed in the South of Europe; as if they had heard and seen all the happiness of history, and had set them to music with their branches.  Pretty girls rode bareheaded, with sunburned men in sombreros, just outside the straggling town, between hedges of roses that made boundaries for bungalows.

The beauty of the world sang a song in Angela’s ears, with the rushing breeze the motor made; the wind in the trees, the flashing lights and shadows on the mountains.  Clear-cut, lovely peaks sprang toward a sky that was like fire opal with turquoise glowing blue behind it.  Still, this was not yesterday!  The song of the world’s beauty did not seem meant personally for her, as it had then.

Piles of grain in the fields were like plumed, golden helmets, laid down in rows to await the heads of resting warriors.  The California oaks, different from all other oaks, were classic in shape as Greek temples sacred to forest deities, standing against a background of indigo sea.  But Miss Dene would talk.

Theodora, in her books, made a speciality of describing the emotional souls of women, her favourite female thermometers being usually at freezing or boiling point—­never temperate.  Descriptions of scenery she “couldn’t do,” and what she called “landscape gazing” bored her.  She was more interested in people, and big towns, than in wide spaces where Nature tried to lecture her.  But because Angela admired the country she admired it, too, more audibly than Angela.

They saved the Mission for the last.  Nick had set his heart on showing it to Mrs. May at sunset.  As for Theo, though she said so much, he knew by instinct that it was not she who cared for the beauty of the magnolia hedges, the hay-gilded meadows, and the dark oaks that blotted the gold.  He felt that he ought to admire Miss Dene, for she was handsome, and put herself out to be kind to him; but he wished the girl away, and was glad that to-morrow she would be travelling with her own friends.  When she looked at him with her greenish eyes, she had the air of judging his points, as if he were a portrait she thought of adding to her collection, and of wishing him to look at her.  Nick was not to be fascinated in this way.