“It was oil business brought us together and he seemed to take a sort of likin’ to me.  We care about some o’ the same things—­books and that.  Now he’s going East—­maybe on more oil business.  Anyhow, he proposes we share a stateroom on the Limited, and he’s been recommendin’ his hotel in New York.  I was kind of plannin’ to be a swell, and hang out at the Waldorf-Astoria, to see the nobs at home.  But his place sounds nice, and I like bein’ with him pretty well.  He’s lit up with bright ideas and maybe he’ll pass on some to me.  His business won’t keep him long, he thinks; and he’s promised his brother James to look after a lady who’s landing from Europe about the time we’re due in New York.  He’ll meet her ship; and if she doesn’t want to stay East any length of time, he’ll bring her back to California.  She means to settle out here.”

Carmen’s face hardened into anxious lines, though she kept up a smile of interest.  She looked older than she had looked when she held out her hands to Nick.  She had been about twenty-six then.  Now she was over thirty.

“Is the lady young or old?” she asked.

“I don’t know anything about her,” Nick answered with a ring of truthfulness in his voice which Carmen’s keen ears accepted.  “All I can tell you is, that she’s a Mrs. May, a relation or friend of Franklin Merriam the big California millionaire who died East about ten years ago—­about the time I was first cowpunching on your ranch.”

“Oh, the Franklin Merriam who made such stacks of money irrigating desert land he owned somewhere in the southern part of the State!” Carmen sighed with relief.  “I’ve heard of him of course.  He must have been middle-aged when he died, so probably this woman’s old or oldish.”

“I suppose so,” Nick readily agreed.  “Great king, isn’t it mighty sweet here to-night?  It looks like heaven, I guess, and you’re like—­like——­”

“If this is heaven, am I an angel? Do I seem like that to you?”

“Well, no—­not exactly my idea of an angel, somehow:  though I don’t know,” he reflected aloud.  “You’re sure handsome enough—­for anything, Mrs. Gaylor.  But I’ve always thought of angels lily white, with moonlight hair and starry eyes.”

“You’re quite poetical!” retorted Carmen, piqued.  “But other men have told me my eyes are stars.”

He looked straight into them, and at the hot pomegranate colour which blazed up in her olive cheeks, like a reflection of the sunset.  And Carmen looked back at him with her big, splendid eyes.

It was a man’s look he gave her, a man’s look at a woman; but not a man’s look at the woman he wants.

“No,” he answered.  “They’re not stars.  They’re more like the sun at noon in midsummer, when so many flowers are pourin’ out perfume you can hardly keep your senses.”

Carmen was no longer hurt.  “That’s the best compliment I ever had, and I’ve had a good many,” she laughed.  “Besides—­coming from you, Nick!  I believe it’s the first you ever paid me right out in so many words.”