withering in the dry autumn sunshine, and washed into fictitious freshness, night and morning by the hydraulic irrigating-hose.  I knew, too, the cool, reposeful night winds that swept down from invisible snow-crests beyond, with the hanging out of monstrous stars, that too often failed to bring repose to the feverish guests.  For the overstrained neurotic workers who fled hither from the baking plains of Sacramento, or from the chill sea-fogs of San Francisco, never lost the fierce unrest that had driven them here.  Unaccustomed to leisure, their enforced idleness impelled them to seek excitement in the wildest gayeties; the bracing mountain air only reinvigorated them to pursue pleasure as they had pursued the occupations they had left behind.  Their sole recreations were furious drives over break-neck roads; mad, scampering cavalcades through the sedate woods; gambling parties in private rooms, where large sums were lost by capitalists on leave; champagne suppers; and impromptu balls that lasted through the calm, reposeful night to the first rays of light on the distant snowline.  Unimaginative men, in their temporary sojourn they more often outraged or dispossessed nature in her own fastnesses than courted her for sympathy or solitude.  There were playing-cards left lying behind boulders, and empty champagne bottles forgotten in forest depths.

I remembered all this when, refreshed by a bath, I leaned from the balcony of my room and watched the pulling up of a brake, drawn by six dusty, foam-bespattered horses, driven by a noted capitalist.  As its hot, perspiring, closely veiled yet burning-faced fair occupants descended, in all the dazzling glory of summer toilets, and I saw the gentlemen consult their watches with satisfaction, and congratulate their triumphant driver, I knew the characteristic excitement they had enjoyed from a “record run,” probably for a bet, over a mountain road in a burning sun.

“Not bad, eh?  Forty-four minutes from the summit!”

The voice seemed at my elbow.  I turned quickly, to recognize an acquaintance, a young San Francisco broker, leaning from the next balcony to mine.  But my attention was just then preoccupied by the face and figure, which seemed familiar to me, of a woman who was alighting from the brake.

“Who is that?” I asked; “the straight slim woman in gray, with the white veil twisted round her felt hat?”

“Mrs. Saltillo,” he answered; “wife of ‘El Bolero’ Saltillo, don’t you know.  Mighty pretty woman, if she is a little stiffish and set up.”

Then I had not been mistaken!  “Is Enriquez—­is her husband—­here?” I asked quickly.

The man laughed.  “I reckon not.  This is the place for other people’s husbands, don’t you know.”

Alas!  I did know; and as there flashed upon me all the miserable scandals and gossip connected with this reckless, frivolous caravansary, I felt like resenting his suggestion.  But my companion’s next words were more significant:—­