But it has a heavy
brooding peace that seems to relax the social conscience. Entertaining is
intermittent, and its inhabitants return to their winter in San Francisco
deeply refreshed. It has its paradoxes like the rest of California. On a
stark little peninsula, jutting out from bare hills into the Bay, is San
Quentin, one of the State's Prisons, and along the edges of the marsh are
Chinese hamlets and shrimp fisheries.
IV
Alexina and Janet purposed to spend the summer reading, idling in the
sweet-scented garden, walking in the early morning, riding horseback in the
late afternoon, taking tea at the club house at San Rafael, or Belvedere,
perhaps, but "cutting out" all social dissipations. Janet was now
twenty-six and beginning to feel the strain as well as seriously to
consider what she should do with the rest of her life. She had great
wealth, she was blasee as a result of doing everything she chose to do, in
public or in private, and she was nearly two generations younger than Judge
Lawton. Nevertheless, she perceived no allurement in the business world,
and the only alternative seemed marriage. Not in California, however. No
surprises there. She might take her fortune to London and become a peeress
of the realm. When change became imperative better go up than down.
Alexina had never felt the attractions of dissipation and was not afflicted
with moral ennui; but she was tired from much thinking and brooding and
intimate personal contacts.
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