The Californians

  XIV

  Whether or not to tell her parents of her determination to write hadbeen a matter of momentous consideration to Magdalena. After theresignation of her faith and her conversation with Colonel Belmont, shehad determined to adhere rigidly to the truth and to the right way ofliving, to conquer the indolence of her moral nature and jealously trainher conscience. The result, she felt, would be a religion of her own,from which she could derive strength as well as consolation for what shehad lost. She knew, by reading and instinct, that life was full ofpitfalls, but her intelligence would dictate what was right, and to itsmandates she would conform, if it cost her her life. And she knew thatthe religion she had formulated for herself in rough outline was farmore exacting than the one she had surrendered.

  She had finally decided that it was not her duty to tell her parentsthat she was trying to write. When she was ready to publish she wouldask their consent. That would be their right; but so long as they couldin no way be affected, the secret might remain her own. And this secretwas her most precious possession; it would have been firing her soul atthe stake to reveal it to anyone less sympathetic than Helena; she wasnot sure that she could even speak of it to her.

  Her time was her own in the country. Her father and uncle came downthree times a week, but rarely before evening; her mother's morningswere taken up with household matters, her afternoons with siesta,calling, and driving; frequently she lunched informally with herfriends. How Magdalena spent her time did not concern her parents, solong as she did not leave the grounds and was within call when visitorscame.

  Don Roberto would not keep a horse in town for Magdalena, but in thecountry she rode through the woods unattended every morning. Theexhilaration of these early rides filled Magdalena's soul with content.The freshness of the golden morning, the drowsy summer sounds, the deepvistas of the woods,--not an outline changed since unhistoried races hadpossessed them,--the glimpses of mountain and redwood forests beyond,the embracing solitude, laid somnolent fingers on the scars of her innerlife, letting free the sweet troubled thoughts of a girl, carried herback to the days when she had dreamed of caballeros serenading beneathher casement. For two years she had dreamed that dream, and then it hadcurled up and fallen to dust under Helena's ridicule. Magdalena wasfatally clear of vision, and her reason had accepted the facts at once.

  Sometimes during those rides she dreamed of a lover in the vague fashionof a girl whose acquaintance of man is confined to a few elderly men andto the creations of masters; but only then. She rarely deluded herself.She was plain; she could not even interest women. She felt that she waswholly without that magnetism which, she had read, made many plain womenirresistible to man.