Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/131

 them, he was confident, knowing the weakness of women well. A man could bend to soft words, even dissimulation, to save a fortune. That would be a trifling price. But consider Helena. If, by some strength of her alien strain that made her different in many ways from the women he knew best, she held to the repudiation of their betrothal, what was hetodo? Helena might refuse to accept his apology tomorrow; she might scorn him, and turn her cold white face away. It was a thing to pace slowly up and down here in the shadow of the roadside oaks and consider, hands behind the back like a thinking man.

A man must leave home, hunger for it, sigh for it, to return and perceive its beauties hitherto unknown, to feel its friendliness as he felt it here tonight. His heart rose in him, a tenderness of poetic feeling blended out the last shred of his anger, as he stood in the moonlight at the margin of the oak trees' shade, viewing the beauty of that place.

In the south stood the low chain of hills separating this broad valley from that in which the pueblo of Los Angeles lay; close at hand on the north, higher mountains rose, the crumbling granite ledges on their rough sides and summits glistening like snow.

Dark, repellent, the canyons of these mountains appeared, rough and unfriendly their steeps and mangy slopes. No trees graced them, little verdure. They seemed the great cinder-heap of a