CHAPTER XVII
THE SHORTEST WAY HOME
THE moon was shining in that city of the picturesque past. Its light fell silvery on the narrow streets, the old adobe houses, the listless palms. In every shadow seemed to lurk the memory of a love long dead—a love of the old passionate Spanish days. A soft breeze came whispering from the very sea Ponce de Leon had sailed. It was as if at a signal—a bugle-call, a rose thrown from a window, the boom of a cannon at the water's edge—the forgotten past of hot hearts, of arms equally ready for cutlass or slender waist, could live again.
And Minot was as one who had heard such a signal. He loved. The obstacle that had confronted him, wrung his heart, left him helpless, was swept away. He was like a man who, released from prison, sees the sky, the green trees, the hills again. He loved! The moon was shining!
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