“Where will it be?” Nick asked, afraid of the answer.

“In California somewhere,” she said.

“You mean it?”

“Oh, yes!  I don’t know where, yet.  I’m falling in love with the South now, but I won’t let myself fall too deep in, till I’ve seen the North.”

“If you’re in love, can you keep yourself from falling deeper in?” said Nick.  “I don’t think I could; I’d sure have to let myself go.”

It had been so good to see the forest creature at the moment when he was needed most, that Angela had melted toward him as snow melts in the spring sun.  She had not only forgiven, but forgotten—­for the moment—­that there had been things to forgive; so she answered this question of his, humanly and simply.  “I wonder?” she said.  “If it were not a question of a country, but a person?  I can’t tell.  I’ve never fallen deep in.”  Then she pulled herself up abruptly.  “Luncheon must be ready,” she went on in a changed voice.  “I’m starving, aren’t you?”

“Starving!” Nick answered mechanically.  But he was saying in his heart, “She’s never been in love!  Hooray!”

The thought shot new colour into existence.  “I’ll pull the world up by the roots to get her,” he thought.  “And she wants to live in California!  Maybe, if I try to make myself all over again, a little worthier—­a little more like what she’s used to, at last she——­” It seemed sacrilege to finish the sentence.

It was for this end, to “make himself more like what she was used to,” that he had bought the new clothes in New York.  They had not been a success.  But, luckily for his happiness to-day, he did not know how Angela had laughed when she saw the shiny shoes outside his door.

Never was a luncheon like that which they ate together in the great cool dining-room, whence everybody else had vanished long ago.  Angela sat facing one of the big windows, and a green light filtering through rose-arbours gave her skin the luminous, pearly reflections that artists love to paint.  Up in the minstrels’ gallery a harpist played, softly, old Spanish airs.

“Before you decide where to live, will you come to my part of the country?” Nick asked, his eyes drinking in the picture.  “There’s a ranch you’d admire, I think.  Not mine.  I’d like you to see that, too.  But the one I mean is a show place.  It belongs to Mrs. Gaylor, the widow of my old boss.  She’s a mighty nice woman, and handsome as a picture.  She’s pretty lonely and likes visitors.  If she invites you, will you come?”

“Perhaps, some day,” said Angela, in a mood to humour him, because everything round her was so charming that to refuse a request would have sounded a jarring note.  Not that she had the slightest intention of visiting Mrs. Gaylor, the widow of Mr. Hilliard’s “old boss.”

“But I’ve mapped out a programme for myself already,” she went on, “which may take a long time, for if I like a place very much I shan’t want to hurry away.  For instance, maybe I shall have a whim to come back here and stay a week or a fortnight.  You see, some one I loved dearly, long ago, lived in California, and there are parts of the country I want to visit, for his sake as well as my own.”