The Breath of the Gods. Sidney McCall

roofs of tiled adobe houses, could not turn her from the belief.

      Near San Jose, cottages peered out from arching vines of rose. Gwendolen was distressed and surprised to find that roses, here, did not bloom continuously, and always in abundance. "They must show like glaciers, when they do come," she admitted.

      With San Francisco, modern life, society, stress, began, anew. Old acquaintances sent in cards. Gwendolen began a whole volume of new admirers, while Yuki, with Pierre as escort, found certain Japanese friends and acquaintances, one the child of an old family servant of her father's house.

      To many thousands of voyagers, San Francisco is but a stopping place, a bird-rest for preening. As a fact it is a city which possesses an unusual share of individuality, of "atmosphere," in the sense that writers use. No where else are to be seen such gray and wind-swept streets, where houses stand sidewise, as if mounting flights of stairs, the parlor windows of one house looking through the chimney-pots of its neighbor. Nowhere else are perched palaces like those of San Francisco, or a growth, as huge and strange in its exotic coloring, as Chinatown. The great, round, shimmering bay and Golden Gate are as a loom, and ships of the harbor, shuttles weaving together the nations of East and West.

       On sailing day, new friends and new flowers gave the little party of the Todds "bon voyage."

      "If New Orleans is a transplanted Paris, this is a Tschaikowsky Symphonie Orientale translated into terms of American life," said Pierre.

      Slowly the city turned from a city to a patch of lichen on a rock. Queer little ditches, which they knew for streets, showed lines of perpendicular-crawling beetles, which they recognized to be whizzing electric cars. They watched it all eagerly, leaning far along the stern rail of the ship.

      Then the sea winds caught them, screaming a welcome into shrinking ears. The white, attendant sea-gulls laughed in harsh appreciation of the antics of the wind. The ocean lifted, and strove, and pounded his cosmic greeting; and—and—well—there was a good stewardess on board!

CHAPTER SIX

       Table of Contents

      The first days of any voyage are admirable in proportion as little, or nothing, is said of them. In this, as in other phases of human intercourse, delicacy lies in restraint rather than in eloquence. Thus is the bloom of society preserved.

      Mr. Dodge, the self-confident, the experienced, the ubiquitous, was first to "show up." The outer reefs of the California coast do not tend toward placidity. Even Dodge did not care to count the hours since he had begun to feel "sleepy" and had sought his cabin.

      Mr. Todd next met the sun. To be more accurate, it was a fog, where only a small bright spot, rubbed as in the centre of a tarnished tray, indicated our chief luminary. Todd's cap was pulled very low, his ulster collar very high. His hands disappeared utterly into large pockets. He walked with the jerky directness of a marionette toward the smoking-room.

      On the third day, when the sun actually shone and the pewter sky was undergoing a gradual transformation into blue enamel, Mr. Todd was able to sit on deck—he still remained noticeably near the smoking-room—and to enjoy unprintable yarns from fellow-smokers. Missionary children began to gambol around the promenade deck, and over the feet of swathed and flaccid mortals, lately exhumed, all with the blinking regard of insects suddenly disclosed beneath a garden stone. Dodge, for a wonder, was not in sight. Mr. Todd had his back toward the main-deck exit from the salon, when one of the group about him thumped a knee, stared up, crying, "By G—, look at that!" and called loudly upon his Maker to witness that the sight was fair.

      Out to the deck had blown a golden apparition—a tall, slim girl with yellow hair crushed under a wide and most unsailor-like hat of yellow sea-poppies. Her skirts and the rest of her were silken browns and yellows. She made straight for the group, rustling like a small eddy in a heap of autumn-leaves. Todd turned a few inches. At the expression on his face a third convive nudged the speaker. "Oh, er—beg ten thousand pardons—didn't have an idea—" mumbled the crimson one.

      "Neither did I," said Todd, enigmatically, as he rose.

      "Oh, dearest of dads," they heard a fresh voice cry. "Now isn't this a world with the top off? I feel like a bunk caterpillar turned into a butterfly."

      Pierre followed his three emancipated comrades, immediately after "tiffin," as the midday meal hereafter must be called. He was, as usual, immaculate in attire, but bore an air of citric melancholy.

      Next arose, in all her might, Mrs. Cyrus Carton Todd. In her aggressive costume of starched piqué, fortified by gold lorgnettes and an air carefully adapted from certain acknowledged "grandes dames" of Washington, she took immediate possession of the Captain, the best deck chair, and the passenger list. As wife of a senator and lady of the new American minister to Japan, she was accepted at once, without demur, reigning Empress of the voyage.

      Sportive infants, oblivious of comfortably extended limbs of lesser mortals, skirted those of Mrs. Todd. Silent Chinese "boys," dispensing beef-tea and gruel, swung pigtails aside from her austere garments.

      Of the party Yuki alone now abode in the mysterious seclusion of her stateroom.

      Before sunset, on that third afternoon, the sea, to use the Captain's expression, quieted into a "bloomin' mill-pond." White birds fluttered incessantly about the stern of the ship, sometimes sinking to the waves for an unstable rest, or rising to visit, in one great silver swoop, the startled and delighted passenger deck.

      Pierre found a chair beside his chaperon. He moved it a confidential three inches nearer before asking, "Will she not be able to come up sometime before to-morrow? This is perfect."

      "She has commissioned me to say that she will try to make the effort this evening, after our dinner; that is, if—" here she shook a playful finger—"if I will play propriety, and any kindly disposed person could be found to assist her upstairs."

      "Ah! I'll go down now, and take seat upon her doormat," cried Pierre, in his excitement.

      "The Chinese coolie might spill chicken broth upon you."

      The day waned slowly. Passengers were beginning already their postprandial walks. Mrs. Todd nodded patronizingly to one and then to another.

      "Madame," began Pierre, with his caressing look, "you have been almost as a mother—a good, indulgent mother—to me in that big land of yours. You will continue to be my very good friend in Japan, will you not?"

      "Why, silly boy, of course I will," she cried. "Have not I always been your friend and Yuki's—even to the point of what Cyrus called 'entangling alliances'?"

      "It is because of its preciousness that I want to hear you say it, dear Mrs. Todd. After all, I am ignorant of Japan, and of what social phantoms Yuki and I may have to fight. But with your championship, I am strong, invincible!" He gave her fat hand just the most delicate of pressures. It might have been the touch of a devoted son; it might, had Mrs. Todd been twenty years younger, have been—well, almost anything. His dark, impassioned eyes, the color of new-opened violets, hung on her kindly face.

      If fault could be found with Pierre, it would be in excess of beauty. From the old blood of France he had received refinement, poise, delicacy—the throbbing of purple veins in temples as satin-smooth as young leaves, and thin nostrils that shivered at every passing gust of emotion. From the more barbaric, vivid Russian mother had come depth of coloring, the flash of sudden animation, deep blue in the eyes, and gold in the hair. Yet with all its fairness the face was not effeminate. One could think of it, without offence, in the armor of a young crusader, or even behind the mediæval visor of a robber-baron. There might be a hint of cruelty behind the wet crimson of the perfect mouth. To Yuki that face was the epitome of all earthly beauty. Before it, the artist in her knelt, in adoration.

       Shortly after twilight came the reverberating clamor of the first dinner-gong. Mrs. Todd and her feminine satellites had agreed to "dress." Mrs. Todd had never made