I did not notice when she left, and not until the clock in the veranda
struck eleven did I become aware of the length of time I had been
dreaming awake.

The moon was shining clear and full in the blue, cloudless sky, so
bright that scarcely a star could be seen, illuminating the whole
country so that everything not in shadow could be distinguished as well
as if it were noontime.

I walked out from the garden down by the Castilian hedge and along the
road where the shadows of the oaks, with their twisted and
mistletoe-covered branches, made grotesque forms. I was very fond of
these solitary walks on moonlight nights, often going as far as the
divide, from which Bolinas and the great ocean can be seen, and where
Larsen's wayside inn now stands, but to-night there was a new sensation
of loneliness which I had never felt before, and I longed for some one
to be with me; then I began to wonder whom I would prefer for a
companion, and thought of all my friends, even to old Madre Moreno, but
none of them seemed to be the one to break the new and undefinable
loneliness. Suddenly the form of the fair stranger, with her bright eyes
and expressive face, came up before my fancy, and I exclaimed, "Yes, it
is she; it is she alone!"

"Alone!" sounded back upon my ear like a human voice, which startled me
from my reverie, and I saw that I was standing beside the old adobe,
whither I had wandered without knowing. Close at my feet lay a bit of
white cloth which attracted my attention, and I picked it up. It was a
handkerchief of fine cambric, in one corner of which was embroidered a
name, which I could easily read in the moonlight, "Ysidria."