“Oh!” cried Angela, her cheeks scarlet.  “I said nothing—­nothing which could make him feel that I didn’t think him a gentleman.  I——­”

“That’s what I told him,” Sara broke in.  “I knew his reason for employing Jerrold, because he made up a sort of allegory about a moth loving a star and trying to fly up to heaven and be near her, or something like that.  I said that a real star couldn’t be stupid enough to think him a moth, or, anyway, not a common one.  And he said, ’That’s just what she does think me, common.’  I knew he meant you, though he didn’t speak your name then.  And I thought to myself, ’She didn’t look like a silly doll stuffed with sawdust,’ I did you the justice to believe that a great lady, experienced in the world, would know and appreciate a man.  I’m just nobody at all, Mrs. May; but even I’m clever enough for that.  I’m sure as fate, if I were acquainted with all the best kings and princes there are in the world, I couldn’t find a better gentleman than Nick Hilliard.  Yet according to him you didn’t have the eyes to see what he was worth.  You not only turned him down, but turned him down saying he was too common for you.”

Angela could stand no more.  It was as if the fierce little woman in dusty blue serge had struck her in the face.  She sprang up, very white, her eyes blazing.  “It is not true,” she said in a low voice.  “He couldn’t have told you I said that.”

“He told me you said just the same thing:  that he was ‘impossible.’  That was the word—­a cruel, cruel word.”

She was up too, the fiery little school-teacher, and they faced each other—­the tall girl, white as lily grown in a king’s garden, and the little snub-nosed, freckled country schoolma’am.

“Do you mean when I used the word ‘impossible,’” asked Angela, “that he thought I meant it in such a way—­meant to tell him that he was an impossible person?”

“Yes, I do mean just that.”

“You’re sure of what you say?”

“Dreadfully sure.  When I’d got that much out of him—­somehow.  I hardly know how—­I felt wounded and sore, as I knew he was feeling, and, would feel all the rest of his life.  Oh, I’d have given mine for him!  I would then, and I would now, to make him happy.  That’s why I came up here—­to find out whether, after all, there could be any misunderstanding between you that could be righted.  He doesn’t know I’ve come.  He thinks I’m staying with a friend in San Francisco.  I don’t want him to know, ever.  I should die of shame.  I wish I could talk in some wise, clever way to you, and get you to see what a mistake you’ve made.  He loves you so, Mrs. May!”

Then a thing happened which was the last that Sara Wilkins had expected.  With a stifled cry Angela turned away, and, covering her face with both hands, sobbed as if her heart would break.

The little school-teacher trembled all over.  She had come here—­giving her time and money—­far more than she could afford—­and her nerve-tissue, in Nick Hilliard’s cause; and all in the hope of making his “star” see the error of her ways.  But when the cruel star broke down and cried uncontrollably, in anguish of soul, the hardness and anger which Nick’s champion had cherished melted into pity.