The furrows of its red-tiled roof looked as if they were the results of age and decrepitude.

Its best room had a musty smell; there was the dampness of deliquescence in its slow decay, but the Spanish Californians were sensible architects, and its massive walls and partitions defied the earthquake thrill, and all the year round kept an even temperature within.
Victor led Miguel through a low anteroom into a plainly-furnished chamber, where Carmen sat painting.
Now Mistress Carmen was a bit of a painter, in a pretty little way, with all the vague longings of an artist, but without, I fear, the artist's steadfast soul.

She recognized beauty and form as a child might, without understanding their meaning, and somehow failed to make them even interpret her woman's moods, which surely were nature's too.

So she painted everything with this innocent lust of the eye,--flowers, birds, insects, landscapes, and figures,--with a joyous fidelity, but no particular poetry.

The bird never sang to her but one song, the flowers or trees spake but one language, and her skies never brightened except in color.