XIX

It was ten o'clock when Rezanov, who had supped
on the Juno, met Santiago in a sandy valley half a
mile from the Presidio and mounted the horse his
young friend himself had saddled and brought.
The long ride was a silent one. The youth was not
talkative at any time, and Rezanov was conscious of
little else save an overwhelming desire to see Con-
cha again. One secret of his success in life was his
gift of yielding to one energy at a time, oblivious
at the moment to aught that might distract or en-
feeble the will. To-night, as he rode toward the
Mission on as romantic a quest as ever came the
way of a lover, the diplomat, the anxious director
of a great Company, the representative of one of
the mighty potentates of earth, were submerged,
forgotten, in the thrilling anticipation of his hour
with the woman for whom every fiber of his being
yearned.

Nor ever was there more appropriate a setting
for one of those inaugural chapters in mating, half
appreciated at the time, that glimmer as a sort of
morning twilight on mountain tops over the mild
undulations of matrimony. The moon rode without
a masking cloud across the ambiguous night blue of
the California sky, a blue that looks like the fire of
strange elements, where the stars glow like silver
coals, and out of whose depths intense shadows of