She ran it down to the highway and chose a
level road leading straight down the valley through cultivated
country. In all the world there was nothing to equal the
panorama that she spread before Peter that evening. She drove
the Bear Cat past orchards, hundreds of acres of orchards of
waxen green leaves and waxen white bloom of orange, grapefruit,
and lemon. She took him where seas of pink outlined peach
orchards, and other seas the more delicate tint of the apricots.
She glided down avenues lined with palm and eucalyptus, pepper
and olive, and through unbroken rows, extending for miles, of
roses, long stretches of white, again a stretch of pink, then
salmon, yellow, and red. Nowhere in all the world are there to
be found so many acres of orchard bloom and so many miles of
tree-lined, rose-decorated roadway as in southern California.
She sent the little car through the evening until she felt that
it was time to go home, and when at last she stopped where they
had started, she realized that neither she nor Peter had spoken
one word. As he stepped from the car she leaned toward him and
reached out her hand.
"Thank you for the fireplace, Peter," she said.
Peter took the hand she extended and held it one minute in both
his own. Then very gently he straightened it out in the palm of
one of his hands and with the other hand turned back the fingers
and laid his lips to the heart of it.
"Thank you, Linda, for the flame," he said, and turning abruptly,
he went toward his workroom.
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