Freeman, after emerging from the miasmatic hell and lake of Gehenna, had taken a succession of baths, with soap and friction, had been attended by a barber and a tailor, and had himself attended the best table to be found for love or money in the charming town of Panama.

He had also spent more than half of the week of his sojourn there in sleep; and he was now in the best possible condition, physical and mental,--though not, he admitted, pecuniary.

As to morals, they had not reached that discussion yet.

But, in all that he did say, Freeman exhibited perfect unreserve and frankness, answering without hesitation or embarrassment any question she chose to ask (and she asked some curious ones).
But when she asked him such an innocent thing as what he was after in California--an inquiry, by the way, put more in idleness than out of curiosity--Freeman stroked his yellow moustache with the thumb of the hand that held his Cuban cigarette, gazed with narrowed eyelids at the horizon, and for some time made no reply at all.

Finally he said that California was a place he had never visited, and that it would be a pity to have been so near it and yet not have improved the opportunity of taking a look at it.
Grace instantly scented a mystery, and was not less promptly resolved to fathom it.