“Oh, wait!” she exclaimed.  “Don’t let’s talk of ourselves yet—­not for a few minutes.  Wait with me, and neither of us will say one word till the sun has set and the light has changed.”

“Till the light has changed,” Nick echoed, a shadow falling over his face.  He raised himself higher on his elbow, his shoulder still touching her foot, and they looked toward the west.

The forest seemed to have been lit up for some great religious festival.  Each towering tree was a Titanic candle, with a flame at the top, against the far-off sky.  The deep-red, fluted trunks gleamed with a pale luminous rose, and long straight avenues of fire-dust stretched away to the end of the world.  A flood of golden flame poured through the forest, like a tidal wave out of the sun.  Then came an ebb, a pause.  The wave receded.  A faint purple haze, like smoke from burning heliotropes, crept along the ground.  The torch of sunset broke into a million stars; blazing golden spiders swung from glittering webs among the treetops; the melting crowns of the redwoods dripped rubies.  Red meteors fell and burst, and the wild glory faded suddenly into a subdued, reminiscent glow.  It was as if a cupful of ruddy wine had been drunk at a gulp, leaving but a few drops to stain the crystal.  The rosy radiance ran along the horizon, and all that lived of the sunset clung to the far edge of the world or caught the gold horns of the Grizzly Giant’s crown, which, like a high mountain summit, could hold the light of day while night purpled the plain below.

All day a concert of birds had filled the upper chambers of the trees with silver pipings, but now not a bird voice spoke.  There was silence, except for a faint mysterious stirring, as of dryads beginning to wake and dress for their night-flitting when a moonbeam should tap on their shut doors.  The lilac haze floated up from the ground, and slowly, very slowly, turned to silver touched with rose.  Like a veil it spread among the trees tangling among their sharp branches, its lacy mesh tearing, to leave dark jagged holes.  But unseen hands mended the rent and wove the veil into a curtain that screened the distance and was pinned up with stars.

The whole forest rustled with mystery in the strange pulsing luminance that was neither sunset nor moonrise, but the memory of one, and a hope of the other—­the kind of light that a blind man might see in dreams.

“Now—­Angela,” Nick half whispered, in awe at the name on his lips, the name of a goddess uttered by a mortal. (Extra hazard!—­extra hazard!) At last he laid his hand on hers, warm and close, and her lips opened to break the spell, when a voice called to Nick in the distance: 

“Nick!  Nick Hilliard, where are you?”

Angela drew away quickly, the spell broken indeed.  He sprang to his feet, his face, that had been pale, flushing.

“It’s Mrs. Gaylor’s voice,” he said, astonished and incredulous, as if at the call of a ghost.