Chapter XXI

CHAPTER XXI

Came a beautiful fall day, warm and languid, palpitant with the
hush of the changing season, a California Indian summer day, with
hazy sun and wandering wisps of breeze that did not stir the
slumber of the air. Filmy purple mists, that were not vapors but
fabrics woven of color, hid in the recesses of the hills. San
Francisco lay like a blur of smoke upon her heights. The
intervening bay was a dull sheen of molten metal, whereon sailing
craft lay motionless or drifted with the lazy tide. Far Tamalpais,
barely seen in the silver haze, bulked hugely by the Golden Gate,
the latter a pale gold pathway under the westering sun. Beyond,
the Pacific, dim and vast, was raising on its sky-line tumbled
cloud-masses that swept landward, giving warning of the first
blustering breath of winter.

The erasure of summer was at hand. Yet summer lingered, fading and
fainting among her hills, deepening the purple of her valleys,
spinning a shroud of haze from waning powers and sated raptures,
dying with the calm content of having lived and lived well. And
among the hills, on their favorite knoll, Martin and Ruth sat side
by side, their heads bent over the same pages, he reading aloud
from the love-sonnets of the woman who had loved Browning as it is
given to few men to be loved.

But the reading languished. The spell of passing beauty all about
them was too strong. The golden year was dying as it had lived, a
beautiful and unrepentant voluptuary, and reminiscent rapture and
content freighted heavily the air. It entered into them, dreamy
and languorous, weakening the fibres of resolution, suffusing the
face of morality, or of judgment, with haze and purple mist.
Martin felt tender and melting, and from time to time warm glows
passed over him. His head was very near to hers, and when
wandering phantoms of breeze stirred her hair so that it touched
his face, the printed pages swam before his eyes.

"I don't believe you know a word of what you are reading," she said
once when he had lost his place.

He looked at her with burning eyes, and was on the verge of
becoming awkward, when a retort came to his lips.

"I don't believe you know either. What was the last sonnet about?"

"I don't know," she laughed frankly. "I've already forgotten.
Don't let us read any more. The day is too beautiful."

"It will be our last in the hills for some time," he announced
gravely. "There's a storm gathering out there on the sea-rim."

The book slipped from his hands to the ground, and they sat idly
and silently, gazing out over the dreamy bay with eyes that dreamed
and did not see. Ruth glanced sidewise at his neck. She did not
lean toward him. She was drawn by some force outside