“He has named the date!” shouted the Doge.  “He goes by to-morrow’s train!  It will be a gala affair, almost an historical moment in the early history of this community.  I am to make a speech presenting him with the freedom of the whole world.  Between us we have hit on a proper modern symbol of the gift.  He slips me his Pullman ticket and I formally offer it to him as the key to the hospitality of the seven seas, the two hemispheres, and the teeming cities that lie beyond the range.  It will be great fun, with plenty of persiflage.  And, Mary, they suggest that you write some verses—­ridiculous verses, in keeping with the whole nonsensical business.”

“You mean that I am to stand on the platform and read poetry dedicated to him?” she demanded.

“Poetry, Mary?  You grow ambitious.  Not poetry—­foolish doggerel.  Or someone will read it for you.”

He had not failed to watch the play of her expression.  She had received all his nonsense, announced in his best style of simulated forensic grandeur, with a certain unchanging serenity which was unamused:  which was, indeed, barely interested.

“And someone else shall write it, for I don’t think of any verses,” she said, with a slight shrug of the shoulder.  “Besides, I shall not be there.”

“Not be there!  People will remark your absence!”

“Will they?” she asked, thoughtfully, as if that had not occurred to her.  “No, they will be too occupied with the persiflage.  I am going to ride out to the pass in the morning very early—­before daybreak.”

“But”—­he was positively frolicsome as he caught her hands and waved them back and forth, while he rocked his shoulders—­“when you are stubborn, Mary, have your way.  I will make your excuses.  And I to work now.  It is the hour of the hoe,” as he called all hours except those of darkness and the hot midday.

For Jasper Ewold was no idler in the affairs of his ranch or of the town.  Few city men were so busy.  His everlasting talk was incidental, like the babbling of a brook which, however, keeps steadily flowing on; and the stored scholarship of his mind was supplemented by long evenings with no other relaxation but reading.  Now as he went down the path he broke into song; and when the Doge sang it was something awful, excusable only by the sheer happiness that brought on the attack.

Mary had important sewing, which this morning she chose to do in her room rather than in her favorite spot in the garden.  She closed the shutters on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner world.  The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or Southern Italy, or anywhere else where the air is balmy.