sojourn there in sleep; and he was now in the
best possible condition, physical and mental,
--though not, he admitted, pecuniary. As
to morals, they had not reached that discussion
yet. But, in all that he did say, Freeman
exhibited perfect unreserve and frankness,
answering without hesitation or embarrassment
any question she chose to ask (and
she asked some curious ones).

But when she asked him such an innocent
thing as what he was after in California--an
inquiry, by the way, put more in idleness
than out of curiosity--Freeman stroked his
yellow moustache with the thumb of the
hand that held his Cuban cigarette, gazed
with narrowed eyelids at the horizon, and
for some time made no reply at all. Finally
he said that California was a place he had
never visited, and that it would be a pity to
have been so near it and yet not have improved
the opportunity of taking a look at it.

Grace instantly scented a mystery, and
was not less promptly resolved to fathom it.
And what must be the nature of a mystery
attaching to a handsome man, unmarried,
and evidently no stranger to the gentler sex?
Of course there must be a woman in it!
Her eyes glowed with azure fire.