But it was too late. The thing was done, and badly done. Angela saw herself a worm, and Nick n.o.ble as a tall pine-tree of the mountains.

Still, it was best that the break should have come, one way or another.

"Why on earth should I care?" she asked herself angrily. '"We could never go on having a real friendship, all our lives--I and a man like that. He's a splendid fellow--of course, above me in lots of ways; but we're of different worlds. I don't see how anything could change that. What a pity it all is--not for my sake, but for his!" And she thought how awkward his fit of shy self-consciousness had made him appear in contrast with a cultured man, a cosmopolitan like Falconer. It was she who had made him self-conscious. She knew that. But there was the fact. Falconer was a man of her world. Nick Hilliard was not. It was sad that Nick, with his good looks and intelligence and fine qualities, could not have had advantages when a boy--could not have gone to a university or at least a.s.sociated with gentlefolk as their equal--which he was in heart. But now he had got those slipshod ways of speaking he could never change. And there were a thousand other things which put him outside the pale of the men she knew.

She would not listen when a sarcastic voice within defended Nick, sneering, "Oh, yes, Prince Paolo di Sereno and some of his friends are _far_ superior to Mr. Hilliard, aren't they?"

Irritated because the "forest creature" had become of paramount importance in her life when he should remain the merest episode, she was surprised and even horrified to find herself despairing because he had done what she forced him to do. She could have cried for what he must be thinking of her. She wanted to go on seeing his faults, but in her changing mood she could see only her own. "He is one of the n.o.blest gentlemen in the world,"

something inside her said. "You aren't worthy to black his boots!" Then the picture of herself blacking them--the shiny ones that were too tight--rose before her eyes, and she was afraid that she was going to laugh--or else to sob. Anyhow, he was gone, and there was an end of it all!

But when afternoon came, things were different again. In Falconer's private car, where she, Princess di Sereno, was the chaperon, and Sonia Dobieski was queen, Angela was so desperately homesick for Nick Hilliard that she did not see how she could get on without his--friendship. "After all," she reminded herself, excusing her inconsistency, "_I_ didn't send him away. He went of his own accord. He might be here now. He refused to come with us. It's only that we oughtn't to be rushing about together any more in that absurd way. It won't do. Things keep happening--unexpected things--like last night. Still if he comes to San Francisco--if he asks again to 'show me the sights' I don't see why I shouldn't say yes--just to so small a favour--and to make up--in case his feelings are hurt."

In her heart she knew that his feelings were hurt. But had she not hurt her own?

There was a piano in the drawing-room part of the car. Sonia was singing to Falconer. They had forgotten Mrs. May, without whose martyred presence they could not have had this happiness. The soul of the Russian girl seemed to pour out with her voice, as upon a tide. The sorrow and pain of her past exile were in it at first: then it rose to the joy of new life in a new world. The sweetness of the voice and all that it meant of love after anguish stabbed Angela as she listened in the distance, like a knife dipped in honey.

XVII

SEVENTEEN-MILE DRIVE

Things were better at Del Monte. Mrs. Harland was there, and made a delightful hostess. It rather amused Angela to watch Theo Dene with Sonia Dobieski, and to see how delightful Falconer's sister was to both. But somehow she contrived that Miss Dene should not be of the motoring party for the Seventeen-Mile Drive. A young officer from the Presidio was produced, to compensate as far as could be for her frankly lamented "failure"; and Theo resigned herself to a second-best flirtation. It was consoling to think that Falconer had been in love with the Dobieski long before he saw her: and Theo could almost forgive the Russian, whom she considered plain and gawky compared to herself. She could not, however, forgive "Mrs. May" for having come into the party, and for being liked by the host better than she was liked. Judging another woman by herself, she thought that, out of revenge for one or two little things (such as the talk about Mrs. Gaylor and Nick Hilliard), Angela was trying to "take away" her California friends. If Theo had considered it worth while, she would have broken her word, and told who "Mrs. May" really was; but that would be worse than useless, as it would only make Angela seem of more importance than at present. However, on hearing that Mrs. May might decide to "run up to Shasta and the McCloud River," she promised herself a certain amount of fun. She had reminded Mrs. Harland so often about writing to Mrs. Gaylor, that at last the letter had been sent. The lady who was supposed to have a claim upon Nick Hilliard was asked to visit Rushing River Camp, as Falconer's place was called; and a telegram had been dispatched by Falconer himself to Hilliard at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, whither he was bound. If they all came--yes, Theo would have her fun.

She thought of this, as she flirted with the officer from the Presidio, and promised to make him the hero of her next book. But the party in Falconer's motor thought of her not at all.

Angela was enchanted with the peninsula of Monterey. In the dark arbour of the cedar forest Falconer kept ordering the chauffeur of a hired car to slow down, or stop. The practically minded young man believed that this great gentleman and the three ladies must be slightly mad. It was so queer to stop a car when she was going well just to stare around and talk poetry about a lot of trees.

One of the ladies, the prettiest and youngest, with yellow hair under her gray motor-bonnet, said they weren't trees but people--either nymphs or witches--and the rest of the party humoured her, talking nonsense about Greece and G.o.ddesses. He thought the pleasure of a motor trip was "going some"; but his pa.s.sengers seemed to have other ideas. They were idiots, of course, but they seemed mighty happy.

Angela, however, was less happy than the others, less happy than she tried to seem. She had a dim idea that, if she had come with Nick, she would have thought this the most beautiful place on earth, and that she had found the ideal spot for a home. As it was, in spite of all the loveliness, she was not sure of herself, or what she wanted. This made her ashamed. She was as self-conscious as Nick had been yesterday, and in sheer panic fear lest "they" should think she was pining for Hilliard, or grieving over some stupid quarrel, she said that she would certainly buy land in the forest. She must not lose such a chance. If for any reason she should change her mind, she could always sell, couldn't she? On this point Falconer rea.s.sured her. "You can sell to me," he laughed in the light-hearted way that surprised the chauffeur. "You build a house and furnish it, and take all the trouble, and I'll buy it from you--to live in myself when I want to imagine I'm in Greece or Sicily, as I do sometimes when I'm too busy to go there." And he looked at Sonia.

Though he laughed, he was in earnest, and Angela began to feel that she might want to keep her house--if she built it. She saw herself walking under the strange dark trees to the gray rocks, to look at the seals. Nick was with her.... She hurried to think of something else. Nick would not be here. They would have forgotten each other by the time her house was built. Perhaps he would be married to his Mrs. Gaylor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Angela was enchanted with the peninsula of Monterey"]

After all it did not seem so romantic to have a place where she could go and look at some seals, alone. Stupid! Because she had come to California on purpose to have a place where she could be alone.

"How absurd women, are!" she thought, irritably. "As soon as we can have what we want, we don't want it. I suppose it must be that. Now I long for all kinds of new things I can't possibly have, which would be very bad for me if I could."

After lunching at the wonderful Club House built of logs, they went back by way of Monterey, and in the sleepy old town which holds more California history than any other they wandered about, "seeing the sights," one after another. They paid their respects to the monument of Father Juniperra Serra, who landed at Monterey with his soldiers a hundred and forty years ago--a long time in America, where life moves quickly. Then, next in interest, came the verandaed Custom House, built under Spanish rule, and looking just the place to spend a lazy afternoon in gossiping about lovely ladies, and pretending to do important business for the Crown. There was the oldest Court-house in California, too, and the oldest brick house, and the oldest frame building--"brought round the Horn"; the oldest theatre, glorified by Jenny Lind's singing; and, indeed, all the oldest old things to be found anywhere in history or romance. But, though Angela dared not say so, she wondered what had become of the really old things, new in the beginning of the seventeenth century when Don Sebastian Viscanio landed to name the town--in honour of Philip the Third--Monterey or "King of the Mountains."

That night they all walked together under the great trees of the park at Del Monte. A lake (where black swans threaded their way like dark spirits among white water-lilies) drank the last light of day, and little waves the swans made were ruffled with dim silver. Above, the sky was another deep blue lake lilied with stars; and as darkness fell, hot and sweet-scented as the veil of an Eastern woman, slowly the boundaries were lost between forest and garden. Outlines faded and blended into one another. The fuchsias, big as babies' fists, the poppies like dolls' crepe sunbonnets, the roses large enough for nightingales' nests, lost their colour, and seemed to go out in the dark, like brilliant bubbles that break into nothingness. Here and there yellow light flashed near the ground, far from the walkers, as if a faint firefly were astray in a tangle of flowers. Chinese gardeners, deft and mysterious as brownies, were working at night to change the arrangement of flower-beds so that the dwellers in the hotel should have a surprise by day.

Theo Dene talked of Carmen Gaylor, telling stories she had heard of the rich widow from people whose acquaintance she had first made at Del Monte.

"I am longing to meet the woman," she said; "I think she must be an interesting character, typically Spanish, or Mexican--or, anyhow, not American--from what they all say. A beauty--vain and jealous, and a fearful temper. I shouldn't like to interfere with a woman of that sort in what she thought her 'rights,' should you?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_They weren't trees, but people, either nymphs or witches_"]

"One can't interfere with a person one has never met, can one?" Angela remarked, pretending not to understand.

"Maybe not, in real life," Theo agreed. "I'm always losing myself in my books, and forgetting that the world outside isn't like _my_ world, made of romance. But you can understand, can't you; here where it's so beautiful that even a _married woman_--who has, of course, left love far behind her in Europe--must feel some faint yearning to be the heroine of a romance?"

Princess di Sereno wondered why she had ever been nice to Theo in Rome.

XVIII

LA DONNA e MOBILE

Angela stood at her hotel window, looking down over the gilded hills and purple valleys of the most romantic city in America--San Francisco, the port of adventure; away to the Golden Gate, where the sea poured in a flood of gold under a sea of rosy fog--a foaming, rushing sea of sunset cloud, beneath a high dome of fire away to the fortified islands and to Mount Tamalpais.

She had arrived only a few hours ago, after two days spent at Del Monte, and was waiting for Nick.

There had been a note sent up the day before, and she had not been in the hotel twenty minutes when he had telephoned. It had been good to hear his voice, so good that Angela had felt obliged to stiffen her resolution.

Would she let him call? he asked; and she said: "Yes, come before dinner."

Her impulse was to say, "Dine with me," but she would not. Instead, she added, "I dine at eight." It was now after seven, and she had dressed to be ready for Nick. He might arrive at any minute. Angela's heart was beating quickly--but perhaps it was the glory of the sunset that made her blood run fast. She was listening for the bell of the telephone, yet when the sharp sound came it went through her nerves with the thrill of the unexpected.

"A gentleman, Mr. Hilliard, has called," announced the small impersonal voice at the other end of the wire.

"Ask him to come up," Angela answered, feeling virtuously firm in her resolve that really had not weakened once in the last five days!

The pretty white room was full of rose-coloured twilight, so pink, it seemed, that if you closed your hand tightly you might find a little ball of crushed rose-petals there when you opened it. It would be a pity to shut out so much loveliness by switching on the electricity, so when Nick came he found Angela, a tall, slim black figure, with a faint gold nimbus round its head, silhouetted against a background of flaming sky. Standing as she did with her back to the window, he could hardly see her face, but the sunset streamed full into his as he crossed the room, holding out his hand.

His dark face and deep-lighted eyes looked almost unearthly to Angela seen in this wonderful light. No man could really be as handsome as he seemed!

She must remember that he had never been so before, never would be again.

It was only an effect. "It's like meeting him transformed, in another world," was the thought that flashed through her head. And the immense height of this great house on a hill, the apparent distance from the veiled city beneath, with its starlike lights beginning to glitter through clouds of shadow, all intensified the fancy. For an instant it was as if they two met alone together on a mountain-top, immeasurably high above the tired, struggling crowd of human things where once their place had been.

Strange what fantastic ideas jump into your mind! Angela was ashamed; and her embarra.s.sment, mingling with admiration of Nick which must be hidden, chilled her greeting into commonplace. Yet she could hardly take her eyes from his good looks.

Nick had dressed himself for evening in some of those clothes bought in haste, ready-made, to please a woman who had laughed at them and at him, during his abbreviated visit in New York. The woman did not laugh now. She forgot that she had ever laughed; and the thought was in her mind that the large white oval of evening shirt set off his head like a marble pedestal.

"How do you do?" she said, giving him her hand, and holding it rather high, in the English way, which seemed excessively formal to Nick. "I'm glad to see you again."

Nick's heart went down. Her voice did not sound glad. This was just what he had expected, though not what he had hoped. She had changed toward him the day they parted, and though she had flung him a word of encouragement, evidently she had gone on changing more and more. There seemed little good in asking what he had come to ask; but he had to get through with it now.

"I guess I don't need to tell you I'm glad to see you," he said. He looked at that nimbus round her head, as she stood with her back to the window.

He could say no more, though he had meant to add something.

"What are you thinking about?" she questioned him almost sharply.

Nick laughed, embarra.s.sed. "I was thinking some words that sound like poetry--or no, they were thinking themselves. Night in her eyes, morning in her hair! Because standing like you do, Mrs. May, a kind of gold powder wreath seems to be floating around your head."

She laughed too. "You must have been reading poetry since I left you!"

"No, that came out of my head. But I've been thinking a whole lot. About a good many things--only most of them were about you, or came back to you if they didn't begin there. Don't you know how one idea can sort of run through all your thoughts?"