evergreen foliage, the young woman uttered a faint sigh, which she
repeated a moment after as a slight nervous yawn. Then she opened
and shut her fan once or twice, striking the sticks against her
little pale palm, and then, gathering the lace under her oval chin
with one hand, and catching her fan and skirt with the other, bent
her head and dipped into the bushes. She came out on the other
side near a low fence, that separated the park from a narrow lane
which communicated with the high road beyond. As she neared the
fence, a slinking figure limped along the lane before her. It was
the tramp of the early morning.

They raised their heads at the same moment and their eyes met. The
tramp, in that clearer light, showed a spare, but bent figure,
roughly clad in a miner's shirt and canvas trousers, splashed and
streaked with soil, and half hidden in a ragged blue cast-off army
overcoat lazily hanging from one shoulder. His thin sun-burnt face
was not without a certain sullen, suspicious intelligence, and a
look of half-sneering defiance. He stopped, as a startled, surly
animal might have stopped at some unusual object, but did not
exhibit any other discomposure. Maruja stopped at the same moment
on her side of the fence.

The tramp looked at her deliberately, and then slowly lowered his
eyes. "I'm looking for the San Jose road, hereabouts. Ye don't
happen to know it?" he said, addressing himself to the top of the
fence.

It had been said that it was not Maruja's way to encounter man,
woman, or child, old or young, without an attempt at subjugation.
Strong in her power and salient with fascination, she leaned gently