At last the man could bear it no longer.  Forcibly he loosed her hands and stepped back.  For a moment longer he lingered, looking down upon her in mingled impatience and regret; then, turning abruptly, he passed hastily out of the cavern and down the trail to the beach.

Still the girl lay motionless.  It was as if every sense were stunned, all power of thought suspended except to grasp the one fact that made her whole world empty, — he was gone!  As in a dream she heard the grating of the pebbles when he pushed his boat into the water, heard the clank of the oars as they dropped into the oar-locks.  Even yet she did not move.  Then, after many minutes, she crept to the opening and searched the sea with eyes almost, too dim with tears to find that for which she sought.  But yes, there it was, — a black speck against the golden sunset.  She watched until she had seen the distant vessel put about, making for the open sea.  Ah, now she knew that he was safe aboard, — no need had they to come farther into shore.  Yet still she waited, straining her eyes to see the ship sink slowly beneath the horizon.  One last glint of sunlight against a white sail, and it was gone.

Then at once she rose, and moving quietly about the little cavern, she put all in perfect order with touch as tender as that of a mother preparing for its last sleep some little child.  Here was the basket he had helped to weave, here the mat on which he had lain.  Her fingers lingered caressingly on each thing that he had touched.  There in the corner still stood the olla in which she had brought him water.  How amused he had been that she could carry it on her head all the way up the hill from the spring without so much as spilling one drop!  But that was all past now.

When at last everything was finished she gave the little rock-walled room one long, lingering look, the look of one who would carry in his heart the image of what he beholds all the rest of his life.  Then she, too, made her way through the doorway into the deepening dusk.

On the beach below, squatted within the opened flap of his tepee, Torquam, mighty chief of the Mariposa, smoked his evening pipe.  A wonderful pipe it was, long and delicately fashioned, inlaid with iridescent fragments of shell.  Yet instantly he laid it aside as the slender form of his daughter darkened the doorway.

“Ah, Wildenai, little wild rose, welcome art thou as sunshine after rain!” His eyes lighted with the tenderness never seen there by any other than this motherless girl.  He stretched his hand to her and the princess came silently and knelt before him.

“My father,” she said firmly, though in so low a tone that Torquam bent to hear.  “Oh, father, thou art always wise!  Thou only knowest best.  I come to thee to tell that I will wed Cabrillo.  I will wed with him whenever thou dost choose!”

Taking her face between his hands, Torquam gazed long and searchingly into the sorrowful eyes of his daughter.