ignorance in his manner of talking about it. She might ask him if it was
"subjective" or "objective"--two words he had heard used at the Debating
Society at Mendocino on the question, "Is poetry morally beneficial?"
For a few moments he was silent. But presently she took the initiative
in conversation, at first slowly and abstractedly, and then, as if
appreciating his sympathetic reticence, or mayhap finding some relief
in monotonous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, but
unostentatiously about herself. So colorless was her intonation that at
times it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating some
conversation she had held with another.

She had lived there ever since she had been in California. Her husband
had bought the Spanish title to the property when they first married.
The property at his death was found to be greatly involved; she had been
obliged to part with much of it to support her children--four girls and
a boy. She had been compelled to withdraw the girls from the convent at
Santa Clara to help about the house; the boy was too young--she feared,
too shiftless--to do anything. The farm did not pay; the land was poor;
she knew nothing about farming; she had been brought up in New Orleans,
where her father had been a judge, and she didn't understand country
life. Of course she had been married too young--as all girls were.
Lately she had thought of selling off and moving to San Francisco, where
she would open a boarding-house or a school for young ladies. He could
advise her, perhaps, of some good opportunity. Her own girls were far
enough advanced to assist her in teaching; one particularly, Cynthia,
was quite clever, and spoke French and Spanish fluently.

As Mr. Bowers was familiar with many of these counts in the feminine
American indictment of life generally, he was not perhaps greatly moved.
But in the last sentence he thought he saw an opening to return to his