from Glen Ellen, after the second bridge is passed, to the right will be noticed a barranca that runs like a scar across the rolling land toward a group of wooded knolls.  The barranca is the site of the ancient right of way that in the time of private property in land ran across the holding of one Chauvet, a French pioneer of California who came from his native country in the fabled days of gold.  The wooded knolls are the same knolls referred to by Avis Everhard.

The Great Earthquake of 2368 A.D. broke off the side of one of these knolls and toppled it into the hole where the Everhards made their refuge.  Since the finding of the Manuscript excavations have been made, and the house, the two cave rooms, and all the accumulated rubbish of long occupancy have been brought to light.  Many valuable relics have been found, among which, curious to relate, is the smoke-consuming device of Biedenbach’s mentioned in the narrative.  Students interested in such matters should read the brochure of Arnold Bentham soon to be published.

A mile northwest from the wooded knolls brings one to the site of Wake Robin Lodge at the junction of Wild-Water and Sonoma Creeks.  It may be noticed, in passing, that Wild- Water was originally called Graham Creek and was so named on the early local maps.  But the later name sticks.  It was at Wake Robin Lodge that Avis Everhard later lived for short periods, when, disguised as an agent-provocateur of the Iron Heel, she was enabled to play with impunity her part among men and events.  The official permission to occupy Wake Robin Lodge is still on the records, signed by no less a man than Wickson, the minor oligarch of the Manuscript.

CHAPTER XIX

TRANSFORMATION

“You must make yourself over again,” Ernest wrote to me.  “You must cease to be.  You must become another woman—­and not merely in the clothes you wear, but inside your skin under the clothes.  You must make yourself over again so that even I would not know you—­your voice, your gestures, your mannerisms, your carriage, your walk, everything.”

This command I obeyed.  Every day I practised for hours in burying forever the old Avis Everhard beneath the skin of another woman whom I may call my other self.  It was only by long practice that such results could be obtained.  In the mere detail of voice intonation I practised almost perpetually till the voice of my new self became fixed, automatic.  It was this automatic assumption of a role that was considered imperative.  One must become so adept as to deceive oneself.  It was like learning a new language, say the French.  At first speech in French is self-conscious, a matter of the will.  The student thinks in English and then transmutes into French, or reads in French but transmutes into English before he can understand.  Then later, becoming firmly grounded, automatic, the student reads, writes, and thinks in French, without any recourse to English at all.