and his many opportunities had given him a distaste for a lukewarm marriage.  Here in Washington, however, California seemed a long way off, and he was only forty, in the very perfection of mental and physical vigor.  Could he not love again?  Surely a man in the long allotted span must begin life more than once.  He found himself, after an hour, in some beautiful woman’s boudoir, or with a charming girl in the pale illumination of a conservatory, longing for the old tremors of hope and despair, and he determined to let himself go at the first symptom.  But he continued to be merely charmed and interested.  If the turbulent waters were in him still, they had fallen far below their banks and would not rise at his bidding.

It was not to be expected that the Senora would write; she hated the sight of a pen, and only wrote once a month—­with sighs of protest that were almost energetic—­to her daughters.  Padre Ortega was too old for correspondence; consequently Talbot heard no news of Santa Ursula except from his major-domo, who wrote a monthly report of the progress of the olive-trees and the hotel.  This person was not given to gossip, and Talbot was in ignorance of the health of his old friend, in spite of one or two letters of inquiry, until almost the end of the session.  Then the major-domo was moved to write the following postscript to one of his dry reports:—­

     The Senora is dying, I guess—­consumption, the galloping kind. 
     You may see her again, and you main’t.  We’re all sorry here,
     for she’s always bin square and kind.

There still remained three weeks of the session, but Talbot’s committee had finished its work, and he was practically free.  He paired with a friendly Democrat, and started for California the day he received the letter.  The impulse to go to the bedside of his old friend had been immediate and peremptory.  He forgot the pleasant women in Washington, his new-formed plans.  The train seemed to walk.

They were not sentimental memories that moved so persistently in his mind during that long hot journey overland.  Had they risen they would have been rebuked, as having no place in the sad reality of to-day.  An old friend was dying, the most necessary and sympathetic he had known.  He realized that she had become a habit, and that when she left the world he would be very much alone.  His mind dwelt constantly on that large brown kindly presence, and he winked away more than one tear as he reflected that he should go to her no more for sympathy, do nothing further to alleviate the loneliness of her life.  In consequence he was in no way prepared for what awaited him at Los Olivos.

He arrived at night.  Padre Ortega was away, so he could get no news of the Senora except that she was still alive.  He sent her a note at once, telling her to expect him at eleven the next morning.

Again he took a long hot ride over sun-burned hills and fields, for it wanted but a few weeks of his birthday.  As he cantered through the oaks near the house he saw that a hammock was swung across the veranda, and that some one lay in it—­a woman, for a heavy braid of black hair hung over the side and trailed on the floor.