Somehow, Miss Dene got herself invited to spend the afternoon in seeing with Mrs. May and Hilliard all the things which Falconer and his sister had spent the whole morning in showing her. Exactly how she did this she herself might have told—with her occasional startling frankness—if she had chosen. But Mrs. May could not. Perhaps Angela had invited her, or said something which could be snapped up as an invitation; for Nick would hardly have suggested a second guest unless his first guest expressly wished for one. In any case, the fact remained that Theo Dene was going in the yellow car for a spin round Santa Barbara, to the Country Club, the Hope Ranch, and above all, to the Mission.

She stood talking on the veranda to Falconer and Mrs. Harland, as she waited for Angela to come down, and for Hilliard to bring round the car. Her host and hostess were laughing at her change of plans, for she had announced, early in the day, that she meant to "lie down all the afternoon and rest her features."

"Who is the beautiful Mrs. May?" asked Falconer.

Theo did not like this way of putting the question, because, quite sincerely, she herself admired no woman who was not of her own type. She was tempted to take advantage of Angela's desire not to be known, and say: "Oh, she's one of a thousand other pretty travelling women with intermittent husbands." This would have been epigrammatic, and at the same time it might have quenched dawning interest in the stranger. Neither the brother nor sister was of the sort who favoured flitting ladies with vague male belongings kept in the background. But suddenly a brilliant idea occurred to Miss Dene, who loved dramatic effects.

"Mrs. May chooses to be an ordinary tourist," Theo said, with just the right air of mystery, "but if she liked, she could travel as a personage. She has her own reasons for coming to America, just as I have mine, though hers are different. Don't you think she ought to see Shasta, and the McCloud River, if her impressions are to be complete?"

"Would she care to go?" said Mrs. Harland. "John and I would be delighted to take her, and put her up for a week-end—wouldn't we, John?"

"Of course," said Falconer. "From what I saw of her, she'd be a charming guest. But poor Hilliard——"

"Oh, do ask him, too, and give me a chance to flirt with him, please. I've had such poor success with you, I'm feeling crushed. Do you think Mrs. Gaylor too formidable for me?"

"If I were a betting man, I'd bet on you," Falconer laughed. "But I don't know how far matters have gone between Mrs. Gaylor and Hilliard. It may be gossip; all the world loves a lover, you know; and it's human nature to weave a romance around two interesting figures placed toward each other as these are."

"Well, I should like to try my hand, if his isn't pre-engaged," said Miss Dene; "and if it is, he won't be wasted on me, for I can always use him up in a book. What fun to have Mrs. Gaylor at the same time! We should soon see if they were engaged if we brought them together, shouldn't we? If not, I'd be free to get in as much deadly work as possible."

"Is Mrs. May's husband living?" asked Falconer, with a twinkle of mischief in his usually grave eyes.

"I think I mustn't tell even you anything about her private affairs," Miss Dene answered virtuously. "But I've reason to know that, for this race, anyhow, she's out of the running. As Mrs. May was telling you at luncheon, Mr. Hilliard is showing her a few things because the mutual friend who was to have done it, couldn't. He can't show her Shasta and McCloud, though, as you can; for a mere motor's no attraction compared to a private car. I'm sure she's never been in one as gorgeous as the kind in America—yours in particular."

"Well, we must give her the chance to try it," said Falconer.

"And you will think of inviting Mrs. Gaylor at the same time?" Theo turned her eyes from her host to his sister, beseechingly.

"I don't know Mrs. Gaylor well," Mrs. Harland demurred. "But if John wants you to see her ranch, and takes us there, I don't mind asking her to Rushing River Camp for a day or two. It's not very likely that she'd refuse"—the lady smiled—"as I'm afraid that socially she's more or less neglected, in spite of her beauty."

"Or because of it," said Falconer. "And here comes Mrs. May."

A moment later the car came too, and Angela realized that already she had reached the stage when she would miss taking her place beside Hilliard. She sat behind with Miss Dene, and Billy the "assistant" climbed into the seat next the chauffeur's.

Theo availed herself of the opportunity to tell what she had heard about Nick and Mrs. Gaylor, with embroideries of her own.

The air was balm of a thousand flowers, but for Angela it was no longer "Parfait d'Amour." The two battleships had long ago finished their speed trial; and trails of floating kelp lay like golden sea-serpents asleep under the blue ripple of the sea. Everything was very beautiful. But it was not yesterday!

In the town with the Mission still distant, she began to feel the "foreignness" of Santa Barbara. The streets had Spanish names, and the trees seemed musical, as she had thought that trees seemed in the South of Europe; as if they had heard and seen all the happiness of history, and had set them to music with their branches. Pretty girls rode bareheaded, with sunburned men in sombreros, just outside the straggling town, between hedges of roses that made boundaries for bungalows.

The beauty of the world sang a song in Angela's ears, with the rushing breeze the motor made; the wind in the trees, the flashing lights and shadows on the mountains. Clear-cut, lovely peaks sprang toward a sky that was like fire opal with turquoise glowing blue behind it. Still, this was not yesterday! The song of the world's beauty did not seem meant personally for her, as it had then.

Piles of grain in the fields were like plumed, golden helmets, laid down in rows to await the heads of resting warriors. The California oaks, different from all other oaks, were classic in shape as Greek temples sacred to forest deities, standing against a background of indigo sea. But Miss Dene would talk.

Theodora, in her books, made a speciality of describing the emotional souls of women, her favourite female thermometers being usually at freezing or boiling point—never temperate. Descriptions of scenery she "couldn't do," and what she called "landscape gazing" bored her. She was more interested in people, and big towns, than in wide spaces where Nature tried to lecture her. But because Angela admired the country she admired it, too, more audibly than Angela.

They saved the Mission for the last. Nick had set his heart on showing it to Mrs. May at sunset. As for Theo, though she said so much, he knew by instinct that it was not she who cared for the beauty of the magnolia hedges, the hay-gilded meadows, and the dark oaks that blotted the gold. He felt that he ought to admire Miss Dene, for she was handsome, and put herself out to be kind to him; but he wished the girl away, and was glad that to-morrow she would be travelling with her own friends. When she looked at him with her greenish eyes, she had the air of judging his points, as if he were a portrait she thought of adding to her collection, and of wishing him to look at her. Nick was not to be fascinated in this way.

Along the Cliff Drive they went to the Hope Ranch, and Angela tried to think of the brave old days of the "Roaring Forties," of barbecues, and wedding feasts for Spanish brides—days when the business of life was to love, and laugh, and dance, and spend the money yielded by thousands of rolling acres. According to the stories, all women had been beautiful, all men brave, and ready to fight for the ladies they loved; and though the world had changed since then, faster here than elsewhere, it seemed to her that at heart the men of America had kept to old traditions more closely than men in older countries. Then she smiled at herself for this impression; for, after all, what did she know of American men?

When they turned at last, coming back toward the Mission, to which, somehow, all the rest had been leading up, the setting sun was beating the dusk into sparks of fire.

At first glimpse, alighting before the steps of the restored Mission church, Angela compared it unfavourably in her mind with the lovely shabbiness of San Gabriel. She had a feeling that Santa Barbara the pleasure-place lived on Santa Barbara the Mission, with its history and romance. But she had only to go inside to beg pardon of the church for her first impression. It was easy to remember that there had never been the same stress of poverty here as among the missionary Fathers of San Gabriel, in the City of Angela. Yet in this place, too, there was the same pathetic effect which had brought tears to Angela's eyes in the dim little church at San Gabriel; an effect that once felt and understood, gives the old Spanish Missions their great, undying charm. At Santa Barbara—sweet name, ringing like the silver bells of the Franciscan Fathers—as at San Gabriel, there had been the same striving to copy the noble designs and proportions of the Spanish cathedrals, visioned in spirit by the homesick monks, who knew well they would never see them with bodily eyes again. With simple materials and unskilled Indian workers, these exiled men had striven to reproduce in the far, lonely West the architecture of the East, loved and lost by them forever. The very simplicity of the church made its beauty.

"Do you think you will go to Shasta in Mr. Falconer's private car?" Nick asked wistfully.

They were flying along together on the winds of the Bright Angel, Angela by Nick's side, on the way to Paso Robles. It was afternoon of the next day; Falconer and Mrs. Harland and Theo Dene had left Santa Barbara in the morning; and the sister and brother had been so pressing in their invitation that Angela had hardly known how to refuse, though not quite willing to accept. Late that night, Mrs. Harland and Theo would arrive at Del Monte, where Falconer would join them, and in a day or two they would go on to San Francisco, where Miss Dene had already been visiting. In Mrs. Harland's maid, Kate had found a friend from her own part of "the ould country," who had "come over" three years ago, and who had known Tim. This meeting was such a joy, that Angela had fallen in with Mrs. Harland's suggestion that Kate should go on to Paso Robles in Mr. Falconer's car McCloud. The girl would thus enjoy her friend's society for several hours, and having arranged Mrs. May's things in the rooms already engaged at the hotel, would await her mistress's arrival that evening. Therefore, Angela, Nick, and the little chauffeur had the Bright Angel to themselves for a run of a few hours through beautiful country, and a visit to the old Mission of San Miguel before arriving at Paso Robles.

"Do I think I shall go?" Angela echoed the question lazily, for she was happier this morning, and basking dreamily in the change, not troubling to wonder what had brought it about. "I hardly know. They were very kind to ask me. Californian people seem so warm-hearted to strangers, and so hospitable, one can't help feeling one's known them for years instead of days. You are like that too—otherwise I shouldn't be here! And I've almost forgotten to be surprised at myself for—anything. I like Mr. Falconer; Mrs. Harland, too; but he is what you said—splendid. I understand why you called him typically Californian."

"I'm glad," said Nick. And he tried to be glad. But he had not been told the romance of Mademoiselle Dobieski. Falconer did not guess that Angela or Theo Dene knew it, though he proposed introducing Mrs. May to a "Polish lady, staying at Paso Robles." "Then, of course, you will go to Shasta, and they'll take you to their place on the McCloud River. They say Falconer's house is the prettiest place of the sort in California. Mrs. Gaylor's never been, but she reads a lot about society folk and their doings in the papers. You'll sure have a good time."

"Why do you say 'you'? They invited you, too."

"Yes, and that was really kind," Nick said. "It isn't 'kindness' to ask you, because 'twould be an honour to have your visit. But they don't want me. I was asked only because I happened to be with you, and Mrs. Harland was afraid my feelings would be hurt if I was left out."

"I'm sure you're mistaken," Angela insisted, laughing within herself because he had not seen Theo's manoeuvres. "Of course they want you." She could not add what was in her mind. "Anyway, Miss Dene does." As for Carmen, Angela had no idea that the invitation was to be extended to her, and the figure of Mrs. Gaylor, who, according to Theo, intended to marry Hilliard, loomed less important than after listening to Miss Dene's gossip. Of course, it would be a good thing for him to care for Mrs. Gaylor, and if she were really nice, to marry her in the end. Only, when a young woman is in a motor-car with a handsome "forest creature" who appears to live only for her pleasure, she does not think much beyond the hour. For that hour he may be hers, and hers alone, though to-morrow they part; and she shuts her eyes to anything so far away, so out of the picture, as an "end."

"I'm not Mrs. Harland's kind," Nick explained; "nor Falconer's, though he's too big a man to care for what people call 'social distinctions.' They'd be kind to me if I went, and wouldn't let me feel any difference they could help. But there'd be a house-party, maybe, and I wouldn't know any one. I'd be 'out of it.' I couldn't stand for that, Mrs. May."

"You're sensitive," Angela said.

"In some ways," Nick admitted. But he did not admit the truth; that he could not, and would not, go to Rushing River Camp because he was jealous of Falconer. To Nick it seemed impossible that any man, free to love, could be five minutes in Angela's society without falling in love with her.

He had had his moments of hope, but with Falconer for a rival the handicap was too great. Not that Nick meant to give up the fight; but if she went to Shasta it would be a knockdown blow. John Falconer was high enough for a place in Mrs. May's own world. Nick despised jealousy as common and shameful, and had always scorned men who yielded to so mean a vice. Now, however, they had his pity. He knew what they suffered, and he could not go with Mrs. May, in Falconer's car.

Nevertheless he beat down the desire to dissuade her from the trip.

"You oughtn't to miss McCloud River," he forced himself to say.

"I'll see," said Angela. "It's nice not to make up one's mind, but just to enjoy the minute."

"Are you enjoying the minute?"

"Yes."

He was rewarded. For this minute was his. They were spinning along the coast road, between sea and meadow, with the salt breeze in their faces. The red-gold earth rose and fell in gracious curves, like the breasts of a sleeping Indian girl, and now and then an azure inlet of the sea lit up a meadow as eyes light a face. In the distance, mountains seemed to float like spirit guardians of hill-children; and desert dunes billowed through irrigated garden oases, like rivers of gold boiling up from magic mines.

Nick pointed out the two little mountains named after Louis the Bishop, and told Angela tales of the country, of the people, and of the little towns with Spanish names and faces, which gave her always that haunting impression of the Old World. Some of the stories were her father's stories, and she liked Hilliard the better for knowing them.

They had both forgotten Miss Sara Wilkins, who had "stopped off" at Santa Barbara because all her life she had wanted to see the place. But just at that moment, on her way to Bakersfield, she happened to be thinking of them both.

At last the car plunged into a maze of folding hills, like giant dunes. The motor road was woven in twisted strands while the railway overhead strode across the gaps between height and height, on a vast trestle that might have been built for an army of Martians. Rock-crested hills rose gray in the sun above the soft night of oak forests; and as the road ascended, its ribbons were looped from mountain to mountain like the thrown lasso of a cowboy.

"Paso Robles means 'Pass of the Oaks,'" said Nick, as they came into a stretch of billowing country where immense trees shadowed the summer gold of meadows.

"Shall we go first to the Mission of San Miguel?" Nick asked. "Or are you tired, and shall I take you to the hotel now?"

"I'm not tired," said Angela. She did not want this day to end yet.

"We'll hit the trail for the Mission, then," said Nick, "and see the sunset, as we did from Santa Barbara."

"Can this be as beautiful?" Angela asked. "Surely not?"

"You, maybe, won't think so, but I know it will be more beautiful for me," he answered. "That imported young lady, with all those elegant fixings, sort of jarred with the Mission architecture, to my mind."

Angela hoped that her laugh was not cattish. "But I'm imported, too," she said. "Shall I jar on you at San Miguel?"

"You're not imported!" Nick dared to contradict her. "Or, if you are, you're the kind there oughtn't to be any duty on."

A rain of sunset colour poured over mountains, hills, and meadows as Nick turned his car toward San Miguel. When they came in sight of the old Mission (built far from the Springs because of hostile Indians), the changing lights were like an illuminated fountain. At last, when they began to fade, Angela said, "Let us go. If we stay longer we shan't remember this at its best."

She would have been surprised if she had known what happiness there was for Nick in the word "we," spoken as she often spoke it now: "We" must do this; "We" mustn't forget that.

But it was a blow when she asked Billy, the chauffeur, if he would like to see the Mission. "Nothing can hurt the car," she said; "and when we come back it will be too late."

Nick was tempted to glare a warning and suppress the youth's interest in objects of historical value: but he refrained. Billy must not get it into his head that there was "anything going on." So the chauffeur was allowed to follow Nick and Angela as they wandered, so it seemed to him, sentimentally about the big Mission enclosure, between crumbling adobe walls where the Franciscan Fathers had sheltered cattle in nights of peace, and Indians in nights of danger. Billy could not feel the pathos of the place—desolate, yet impressive in its simplicity; but as he sauntered about, his hands in his pockets, whistling beneath his breath, "I can't marry you!" his smart little modern mind began to work. The strategic value of the position appealed to him, and he saw why "those old Johnnies," as he irreverently styled the Padres, had planted the Mission here. "Guess they knew their business 'most as well as if they'd been soldiers," he said to himself.

Billy found pleasure in picturing the massacres which must have taken place, imagining the great doors of the enclosure opened hastily to let in an escaping band of "friendlies"; then the bursting in of the enemy, and the death of the Fathers as they tried to protect their Indian children. Many had died by fire and tomahawk, but always others had come to take their place; and so the work had gone on through time, even as the bell-signals had gone on sounding from Mission to Mission along El Camino Reale, the highway of the Padres.

"One Father lives here; a dear old gentleman," said Nick. "I met him once, but he mayn't remember me. I'll knock at his door to ask for the key of the church. Somehow I think you're going to like it better than the church of Santa Barbara. There's something special about this place, I hardly know what, but you'll know. And they've got some vestments they're proud of—made by Queen Isabella the Catholic and her ladies."

It rather surprised Angela to hear Nick speak of "Isabella the Catholic," for this way of naming the Queen showed knowledge of history; and Angela had not yet discovered that history was Nick's favourite reading. Indeed, she was only beginning to learn a few things about him. At first her whole rather patronizing idea of the young man had been that he was an "interesting type," a "picturesque figure." Then, when she heard him talk with Falconer, and Falconer talk of him and of what he had done, she saw that Hilliard was already a man of importance in his State: that the "picturesque figure" was merely the woman's point of view. She was ceasing to patronize him mentally now, and almost every hour he gave her some surprise.

At a closed door in the white, deserted cloisters, Hilliard knocked, but there was no answer. His face clouded, for he had set his heart on showing Mrs. May this Mission church.

"This means we can't get the key," sighed Angela.

"I'm afraid so," he agreed. "But it's possible the Padre's showing some one around, or having a look at his beloved vestments."

They walked to the church door and found it shut; but to their surprise the big old-fashioned key was in the lock. Nick pushed the door open and they both went in, followed by Billy. The Padre was not to be seen. So far as they could tell in the dimness the church was empty.

"Queer!" exclaimed Nick. "I wonder what can have become of the Padre? It isn't like him to leave his church open at this time of the evening. It's late, and we'll have to light up before we start on, although we've only eight miles to go."

"I'm sorry he's not here," Angela said. "I should have loved to see Queen Isabella's vestments."

"Would you? Well, you shall, if I have to turn everything in the church upside down. They must be somewhere."

The two wandered on, peering through the dusk at the primitive paintings and decorations, made by Indians according to designs of Spanish monks.

"Do you suppose the vestments may be kept up in that gallery?" Angela suggested. "It looks a safe sort of place for treasures. But if they're there I'm afraid we shall find them in a locked box."

It was worth trying, and they climbed the narrow stairs that led up to a gallery curtained with twilight. There sure enough was a box, and, like the door, it was open, the key in the lock. Within, free to every hand, were the embroideries, the great treasures of the church.

"Isn't it mysterious?" she asked, in a half-whisper, for loud tones would make jarring notes in this haunt of silence. "Can anything have happened to the Padre?"

"Things don't happen these days," Nick reassured her.

But he was not quite easy in his mind. "It's too dark for you to see the vestments well. Shall I carry them downstairs?"

"No," said Angela. "I'd rather look at them here. It's like staring at flowers in the night. The colours come up to your eyes in the most wonderful way."

Seeing that she meant to kneel by the open chest Nick whipped off his coat to lay under her knees, and she laughed as she named him Sir Walter Raleigh. Hilliard and Billy stood behind her, Nick stooping sometimes to examine a stole or altar-cloth she wished to show him, Billy frankly bored, until a faint sound somewhere made him prick up his ears.

"Maybe that's the Padre now," said he. "Shall I go and look?" Then he pattered down the steep stairway without waiting to be answered.

Angela and Nick forgot him for a moment, until his nasal young voice called excitedly from below the gallery:

"Say, Mr. Hilliard, we're locked in!"

"What!" exclaimed Nick, straightening himself up and dropping the end of an embroidered stole.

"Some fellow's been to the door and locked it on the outside."

It was very dim in the Mission church. Angela had not realized how dim until she heard the news announced through Billy's nose. They were locked in!

Somebody had been to the door, somebody had locked it on the outside, and it was deep twilight, almost night.

Suddenly it seemed completely night. The colours of the old vestments still glowed in the dusk, like smouldering coals in a dying fire; but that was because of the rich tints, and because the eyes gazing at them were accustomed to darkness. Looking up at Nick to see what his silence meant, and whether he were nonplussed or merely deciding on a plan of action, Angela could hardly make out his features. She could see clearly only his eyes, luminous and gray.

"What shall we do?" she asked. Her voice sounded appealing, like that of a child.

"Don't worry, Mrs. May," said Nick, with sudden cheerfulness. "We'll get out all right. I was just studying what must have happened. That's why I was so mum. I reckon the Padre must have been away—though why he left the key in the door beats me—and coming back he locked up for the night. Unless he went around in the direction of the auto he wouldn't have seen it. If he looked in here, of course he'd have thought the church empty, we being in the gallery. And it's late in the day now, so late he wouldn't expect visitors."

"It's so 'late in the day' that it's night!" cried Angela. "Another reason for his not seeing the motor."

"Not quite night yet! And I'm going down to make all the noise I can at the door, assisted by Billy. There'll be such a din, between the two of us, you'll want to stop your ears, and as for the Padre, he'll come trotting as fast as his legs will carry him, to stop the row." Nick laughed so jovially that Angela began to be seriously concerned. If it were necessary to assume such gaiety he must regard the situation as desperate. She remembered how far away was the sole occupied room among the many empty, echoing cells.

Nick helped her down the steep stairway, and the touch of his hand upon her arm was comforting. It was cold in the darkening church, and she felt the chill more in imagination than in body; yet she shivered.

"What if we have to stay here all night?" she thought. But she kept the thought to herself.

Nick and Billy took turns in pounding on the door, shouting, "Hi, Padre!" then doing it together; but the separate and combined noises, ear-splitting inside the church, produced no result. The dreamy silence was shattered in vain, and at last, when the two refused to be discouraged by lack of success, Angela stopped them.

"It's no use," she said. "He isn't going to hear. And I shall have hysterics or something idiotic if you keep on for one more minute."

"I was thinking of trying another way," said Nick, still painfully cheerful.

"What other way?—since even Samson couldn't batter down the door."

"A lot simpler than battering. Climb out of a window."

"Too high," said Angela.

"No. I can manage all right. I'll get out, find the Padre, and——"

"And leave me here in the dark? No!"

"But there'll be Billy."

"Let Billy go," Angela half whispered, "and you stay with me. Supposing you went, and the Padre wasn't there, and—and you weren't able to get back. Oh, I couldn't bear that!"

Never had Nick known so exquisite a moment. He was sorry this queer, mysterious accident had happened, because it seemed to reflect somehow on his intelligence and foresight as a guide. And he hated to have Angela distressed. But—after his strivings with jealousy, and his defeat—it was balm that she should depend upon him, and want him with her in this adventure.

"I thought, if worst came to worst, I might find a ladder outside," he said, fearful of betraying his illicit happiness.

"Billy can find a ladder, if there is one," Angela persisted. "There's the most weird, rustling sound, which comes every once in a while, and I can't possibly stand it with only Billy."

Nick could hardly speak for joy, but he managed to reply, "All right; Billy shall be the man to go."

The going was easier to propose than to carry out: for in bygone days, when the Padres of Old Spain were building New Spain, Mission churches had to protect their flocks against the devil incarnate as well as excarnate. Windows were made few and high; and now, when the brave builders sleep, it is nobody's business to worry about the free passage of air. Such windows as San Miguel possesses were hermetically closed that night when Angela di Sereno and Nick Hilliard were imprisoned; and Billy, standing on Nick's shoulders, had to work a few tedious moments before he could induce one of these windows to open. By the time the wiry, slim figure was ready to straddle the window-sill, slip out, dangling, and drop on the grass, night had closed in, fragrant and purple in the open, heavy and black in the church.

Angela came and stood close to Nick. She had never been a timid girl; but since the night when she had lain watching a thief who slowly, slowly raised her window, twelve storeys above the ground, foolish and hitherto unknown terrors crept through her veins if she happened to wake in the dark. And now there certainly was a rustling which stirred the silence, then died, as if it had never been.

"Don't go away from me," she said. "It's so dark that if we're separated we may be ages finding each other."

This sounded like an allegory!

"No, we mustn't be separated," Nick answered, struck by her words, as if by a prophecy. Then he, too, heard the rustling—faint, winged, and mysterious.

They stood still and close together, listening. There was no sound from outside—not a call for the Padre, not a reassuring shout that Billy had succeeded in finding him.

Angela groped with her hand, and, by accident, touched Nick's. To save his soul he could not have resisted pressing the small cold fingers! Wonderful! She did not snatch them away! Often they had shaken hands, or Nick had taken hers to help her in or out of the motor-car; but there had been nothing like this. He felt the thrill of the touch go through him as though electric wires flashed a message to his heart. He was afraid of himself—afraid he should kiss her hand, or stammer out "I love you!" And that would be fatal, for she would never trust herself to him again. Besides, it would not be fair. She was like a child asking his protection, here in the dark, and he must treat her as a man treats a child who has come to him because it is afraid. But he could not think of her as a child. He thought of the night in New York when she had knocked on his door, and called to him, a stranger, for help. He thought how he had seen her, drowned in the waves of her hair, like the angel of his dreams.

"Do you hear that?" she whispered, letting him keep her hand, even clasping his with her fingers. "There's something alive in this church, something besides ourselves."

Nick felt giddy. It was all he could do to keep himself from catching her in his arms, no matter what might be the consequences, no matter how she might hate him a moment afterward. But he resisted, and the strain of temptation passed.

"A bird has got in, perhaps," he said.

"You—you—don't think it could be the Padre himself ill, or—or——"

Nick understood her hesitation and fear.

"No," he soothed her. "We'd have seen any but some small thing. I've got two or three matches in my box, I guess. We'll have a look around." This was supreme self-sacrifice on his part, for to find matches and "look around" meant letting Angela's hand go. To let it go was tempting Providence, since almost certainly she would never, of her own accord, slip it into his again.

"Yes, do let us," she said, and drew the hand away. Nick supposed she had hardly been conscious that he had held her fingers in his, and even pressed them. But this was not the fact. True, Angela had mechanically groped for a protecting touch. Nevertheless, she was aware of Nick's hand on hers, and glad of it, with a gladness made up of several conflicting feelings: such as surprise, some slight shame, and defiance of that shame. She was afraid of the rustling in the dark, which might mean a lurking thief, a man half murdered, or one of a dozen things each more unpleasant than the other. Yet she half liked being afraid in the dark, with Nick Hilliard to reassure her, though she would have hated it with Billy. No unknown horror she could conjure up would have made her want to touch Billy. She was almost sorry when Nick found his matches and together they began moving about the church, she keeping a little behind.

The last match but one lit up something white that stirred beside the altar; and as the flame died down, leaving only a red glowing point, a pair of eyes like two points of fire stared up from the floor.

"Oh!" murmured Angela, and clutched Nick's coat sleeve, like a girl of early Victorian days. But, after all, women have not changed in essentials. They are much the same now in the dark, when pale things stir or shine unexpectedly; and they are still glad to have with them at such times a man, preferably a handsome man, they happen to like better than any other.

"Great Scot, it's an owl!" said Nick, profiting by the last match of all. It was, or appeared to be, a white owl; and it seemed to him for a second or two as if the witch-bird of the Grapevine man at Los Angeles had come to give the advice it had refused. But this was a childish idea, he knew! The owl was a plain, ordinary owl, which no doubt lived in the neighbourhood of San Miguel, and had flopped in, perhaps in search of the proverbial church mouse. It was afraid of the other intruders, and afraid of the match, so afraid that it flapped its wings and hooted dismally. It hooted three times, which, if it had been the witch fortune-teller, might really have meant something, though there was no time just then to think what. Nick was somewhat alarmed lest, in its anger and fear, it should dash at Angela's face, but she would not let him strike the creature with his hat.

"No, poor thing, it's worse off than we are, because it's alone, and we're together," she said. "We'll go, and leave it in peace now we know what it is." And she kept beside Nick in the dark by holding daintily to his coat sleeve.

He found the steps of the gallery, and made her sit down on the lower one, rolling up for a cushion his coat, on which she had knelt as she looked at the vestments. It began to seem odd that Billy had not come back, but it was difficult for Nick to regret the delay as much as he ought, for Angela's sake, to have regretted it.

When she shivered and confessed that she was cold, Nick fetched her a priest's coat from the gallery, a rare piece of brocade, embroidered perhaps by queen's fingers, and smelling of incense.

"What can have happened to Billy?" Angela wondered. "It's the strangest thing that he doesn't come back. I begin to be frightened about him."

Nick reassured her once more. Things often seemed queer that were simple when explained, as doubtless this would be. "I suppose you'd not like me to go——" he began, only to be cut short before he could finish his sentence.

"No—if you mean, would I like you to go and look. While you're here——"

"Yes, Mrs. May?"

"Why, of course, nothing matters so much. And I wish you wouldn't stand where I can't see you. Do sit down on this step by me."

So Nick sat down on the step, and her shoulder touched his arm. They talked in low voices, he telling her things to "keep her mind off" the situation: things about the Mission and other Missions. Then the conversation turned to Nick's ranch and the oil gusher which had given him fortune out of threatening ruin; and he described the queer little oil city which had grown up on his land.

"I should like to see it," Angela said, when he had pictured Lucky Star City and ranch in a simple way, which was nevertheless curiously graphic.

He caught up her words eagerly. "Would you let me take you there?" he begged. "Mrs. Gaylor'd invite you to stay at her house. You know I've told you about that, and how——"

"Yes, I know." Angela could hardly have explained why, but somehow she did not want to hear Mrs. Gaylor talked of just then. She was no longer indifferent to the idea of seeing Nick's home, and the woman who had helped him to make it, yet she was not sure that she wished to go there. Certainly she did not wish to visit Mrs. Gaylor. But—she would like to know whether the mistress of the Gaylor ranch was really so very beautiful.

"What we must think about now, is how to get out of this church," she went on, laughing faintly in the dark. "It seems as if we might have to stay here all the rest of our lives."

"Are you hungry?" Nick inquired.

"A little."

In his enraged disgust at not being able to procure a meal, Nick would gladly have killed and cooked the owl.

"Are you?" Angela asked.

"Am I—what?"

"Hungry."

"Good heavens, no!"

Time passed vaguely, as time does pass in the dark, when there are no means of counting the minutes. They could hear their watches ticking, if they listened, but they never listened long enough to know how the seconds went by. And all the matches were gone.

"It's like being lost in a cave, or a mine, or the catacombs," Angela reflected aloud, "with your only candle burnt out. You can't tell whether it's minutes or hours."

"It must be mighty tedious for you, I'm afraid; though Billy's sure to come back soon," said Nick.

"No, somehow it isn't tedious," she answered as if puzzled. "I suppose I'm rather excited. And you——"

"Well, I suppose I'm rather excited, too," said Nick, in his low, quiet voice, that did not betray what he felt. Angela's voice told more of what went on in her soul. It was, as Nick often thought, a voice of lights and shadows.

At last—what time it might be they could not tell—there came a sound of a key turning in a lock. The door opened, and a yellow ray from a lantern streamed into the church, making the owl in its corner flutter wildly. Billy's face showed in a frame of dull gold, as he peered about, blinking.

Then, for the first time, Angela knew that Nick had been angry with the chauffeur. There was something in his tone as he said, "Well! So you have come!" which suggested that, if she had not been there, the "forest creature" might have added some strong and primitive language.

"Couldn't help it, Mr. Hilliard. I done the best I could," Billy explained hastily. "When I got out there, I was up against a tough proposition, and I guess it would have been tougher yet if I'd stopped to do much thinking."

"I don't know what your proposition was. But seems to me if it had been mine I'd have found time to yell: 'All right—coming as soon as I can!' as I passed the open window," Nick remarked dryly. "Mrs. May'll think we're a nice lot."

But Billy broke into a flood of explanations, too proud to excuse himself to Hilliard, after being, as he thought, unjustly reproached, yet willing to justify himself in the eyes of the lady.

He had dropped from the window, he said, just in time to see a dim figure, which looked like that of a Padre, disappearing in the distance. He had started instantly in pursuit. If he had waited to call out under the window the figure would have disappeared, and he might not have found it again. As it was the old man had gone so far, and was going so fast, that it had taken some time to catch up. He—Billy—had yelled. The Padre—for the Padre it was—had eventually stopped. Then had followed explanations why the key was in the church door, and the door open; why the door was afterward locked, and why the Padre was hurrying away from the Mission, late in the evening, with the key in his pocket. And all these explanations were simple enough, simpler than Billy's own.

In the first place a gentleman in the hotel at Paso Robles—one who came often to the Mission of San Miguel, and was a most important person—had sent a message asking that the church might be opened for him in the afternoon. He wished to drive out, and bring a lady to see the Mission. The Padre, obliged to spend the afternoon at the bedside of a man dying at a distant farmhouse, stuck the key in the church door, with a note attached, asking the lady and gentleman to lock the door when ready to go away, and hide the key under a big stone which the letter indicated. The vestments and altar cloths, the great treasures of the church, had been purposely left in an open box, that they might be inspected by the visitors, and the Padre had departed with a growing uneasiness in his mind, lest the instructions should be neglected. So strong was his presentiment, "though the gentleman was not one to forget," that he felt compelled to leave the sick man before nightfall, and hurry off to the church to see if his fears were justified. He promised, however, to return to the bedside immediately; and luckily meeting the gentleman, heard a confession that indeed the key had been forgotten. Only a short time had passed since the church was left empty, therefore the Padre had no further fear for the safety of the vestments. He hurried on, missed seeing the motor, found the key in the church door as he expected, gave it a quick turn in the lock, took it out, put it in the pocket of his long gown, and started back to the farm as fast as his legs would carry him.

"Well, wouldn't he give you the key?" Nick asked, when the story had reached this point.

"Yes. He gave it to me. But it was pretty dark by that time, and a good long way from the Mission. I lost myself, and thought I was never going to get here," Billy admitted. "I guess I must have wandered all round Robin Hood's Barn, when, just as I was ready to give up boat, the stars come out through a lot of clouds, and showed me the roof of the church. I steered by that, and here I am."

"I think we must be grateful, and not scold him," said Angela.

"I did my best, anyhow," Billy persisted, "and I brought this lantern out of the auto. The worst is, I don't know how her lights'll work, for thinkin' to be at the hotel before dark, I didn't bring no water."

Nick stifled a word or two he would have liked to say, reflecting that perhaps he was as much as to blame as Billy. He ought to have left nothing to chance where Angela's comfort and safety were concerned.

They got water, though finding it meant further delay, and after all, the acetylene lamps obstinately refused to shine. It was the first time they had been used since Nick bought the car, and he abused himself roundly for not having tested their temper. Something was wrong, something which neither his knowledge nor Billy's could set right; and after tinkering for half an hour, they started with no other light than that of the lantern which Billy proposed to hold while Hilliard drove.

By this time Angela was thankful for the cloak she had left in the car. It was nearly twelve; and the eight miles which the Bright Angel would gaily have gobbled up in the same number of minutes had she been able to use her eyes, took an hour to negotiate. Like a wounded lioness the car crawled along the dark road, illumined only by a fitful spot of yellow light; and a deep-toned clock somewhere was striking one as she drew up before the door of the hotel.

Most of the windows had gone to sleep, but a few near the front entrance were twinkling wakefully, and the door flew open in response to the call of the motor. A servant of the hotel came out, but behind the liveried man appeared the tall figure of John Falconer, with a woman at his side.

"We've been anxious about you," Falconer said, coming forward.

That "we" was suggestive; and Angela's fancy sprang to a happy ending for the marred romance. As she entered the hall, dazzled by the lights, her first glance was for the woman who stood beside Falconer, smiling though a little shy. It did not need Falconer's introduction to tell that this was Mademoiselle Dobieski; and if the singer had lost her youth in Siberia, Paso Robles, or the magic medicine of love, had given it back. Her pale face, lit by immense dark eyes, was radiant, and though she leaned lightly on a stick, it seemed that this was a mere concession to a doctor's order, or a habit not quite forgotten.

"This is the lady I told you of," Falconer said to Angela, when he had heard the story of the adventure. "I told her about you, too, and she would sit up to see you. So would your maid, of course, who has been in a great state of anxiety—and even the cat was depressed. Mademoiselle Dobieski has been trying to console your poor Irish girl."

"I could not bear her to be unhappy," said the singer, in a voice of a curiously thrilling quality. "I am so happy myself! This is the best day of my life. I don't want it to end."

"The doctor has told her she will be cured," Falconer explained. "You can guess whether it has been a happy day for me! And she has promised to be my wife. It was in the Mission church of San Miguel, bless him!"

"Then it was you who forgot the key in the church door!" exclaimed Angela. "I felt it was, somehow. And no wonder you forgot!" She threw a smiling glance at Nick.

Nick said nothing, but he too blessed San Miguel. He knew nothing about the bodily ailments which brought people to sulphur springs, but he thought that no torture of the body could be worse than jealousy; and of that pain San Miguel had in a moment cured him.

He blessed also the owl which had rustled and made Angela want him near her.

"I believe I'll catch it, and have it tamed at my place," he said to himself. "I'll give it a good time all the rest of its life."

And next morning early, while Angela slept, he motored out again to the Mission, found the Padre, caught the owl which was young and dazed, brought it to the hotel, and hired a boy to take it by train to Bakersfield.