Angela stood at her hotel window, looking down over the gilded hills and
purple valleys of the most romantic city in America--San Francisco, the
port of adventure; away to the Golden Gate, where the sea poured in a
flood of gold under a sea of rosy fog--a foaming, rushing sea of sunset
cloud, beneath a high dome of fire away to the fortified islands and to
Mount Tamalpais.
She had arrived only a few hours ago, after two days spent at Del Monte,
and was waiting for Nick.
There had been a note sent up the day before, and she had not been in the
hotel twenty minutes when he had telephoned. It had been good to hear his
voice, so good that Angela had felt obliged to stiffen her resolution.
Would she let him call? he asked; and she said: "Yes, come before dinner."
Her impulse was to say, "Dine with me," but she would not. Instead, she
added, "I dine at eight." It was now after seven, and she had dressed to
be ready for Nick. He might arrive at any minute. Angela's heart was
beating quickly--but perhaps it was the glory of the sunset that made her
blood run fast. She was listening for the bell of the telephone, yet when
the sharp sound came it went through her nerves with the thrill of the
unexpected.
"A gentleman, Mr. Hilliard, has called," announced the small impersonal
voice at the other end of the wire.
"Ask him to come up," Angela answered, feeling virtuously firm in her
resolve that really had not weakened once in the last five days!
The pretty white room was full of rose-coloured twilight, so pink, it
seemed, that if you closed your hand tightly you might find a little ball
of crushed rose-petals there when you opened it. It would be a pity to
shut out so much loveliness by switching on the electricity, so when Nick
came he found Angela, a tall, slim black figure, with a faint gold nimbus
round its head, silhouetted against a background of flaming sky. Standing
as she did with her back to the window, he could hardly see her face, but
the sunset streamed full into his as he crossed the room, holding out his
hand.
His dark face and deep-lighted eyes looked almost unearthly to Angela seen
in this wonderful light. No man could really be as handsome as he seemed!
She must remember that he had never been so before, never would be again.
It was only an effect. "It's like meeting him transformed, in another
world," was the thought that flashed through her head. And the immense
height of this great house on a hill, the apparent distance from the
veiled city beneath, with its starlike lights beginning to glitter through
clouds of shadow, all intensified the fancy. For an instant it was as if
they two met alone together on a mountain-top, immeasurably high above the
tired, struggling crowd of human things where once their place had been.
Strange what fantastic ideas jump into your mind! Angela was ashamed; and
her embarrassment, mingling with admiration of Nick which must be hidden,
chilled her greeting into commonplace. Yet she could hardly take her eyes
from his good looks.
Nick had dressed himself for evening in some of those clothes bought in
haste, ready-made, to please a woman who had laughed at them and at him,
during his abbreviated visit in New York. The woman did not laugh now. She
forgot that she had ever laughed; and the thought was in her mind that the
large white oval of evening shirt set off his head like a marble pedestal.
"How do you do?" she said, giving him her hand, and holding it rather
high, in the English way, which seemed excessively formal to Nick. "I'm
glad to see you again."
Nick's heart went down. Her voice did not sound glad. This was just what
he had expected, though not what he had hoped. She had changed toward him
the day they parted, and though she had flung him a word of encouragement,
evidently she had gone on changing more and more. There seemed little good
in asking what he had come to ask; but he had to get through with it now.
"I guess I don't need to tell you I'm glad to see you," he said. He looked
at that nimbus round her head, as she stood with her back to the window.
He could say no more, though he had meant to add something.
"What are you thinking about?" she questioned him almost sharply.
Nick laughed, embarrassed. "I was thinking some words that sound like
poetry--or no, they were thinking themselves. Night in her eyes, morning
in her hair! Because standing like you do, Mrs. May, a kind of gold
powder wreath seems to be floating around your head."