The spell was broken for Angela. She knew now, if she had not known
before, that it was Nick Hilliard who lit the world for her with the light
never seen on land or sea, where love is not. Some quality was gone from
the sunshine, and the glory of the golden poppies had withered.
Back in San Francisco, living in the rooms which he had helped to make
beautiful with daily gifts of flowers, she realized how completely Nick
had meant for her the spirit of the West. It was because he had been with
her that, from morning till night, she had thrilled with the joy of life
and excited anticipation of each new day which had never failed or let her
tire.
Every moment she missed him and wanted him, and would have given anything
to call him back to her; but she had no right to call, for what had she to
give worth his pain in coming?
Angela was an anxiety to Kate and a responsibility to Mr. Morehouse. The
banker would have liked to send his friends to call upon Mrs. May, but she
was in no mood to meet people. Then he suggested that she should go to Del
Monte for the summer and watch the beginning of the new home, but she
dismissed this idea, saying that as the architect had not yet even
finished his plan it would be a long time before the house could reach an
interesting stage.
"We all go somewhere in summer," Mr. Morehouse urged. Whereupon Angela
merely shrugged her shoulders. "You who live here may want a change," she
said. "I've had plenty of changes. I'm very happy where I am, thanks."
But she did not look happy, and Kate, who loved her, realized the
alteration far more keenly than Mr. Morehouse, though even he felt vaguely
that something had gone wrong with the Princess di Sereno. Kate, who knew
well what a difference happiness could make in a woman's health and looks,
guessed that the loss of her mistress's colour and spirits was connected
with the disappearance of Hilliard. A paragraph she had read in that
exciting number of the _Illustrated London News_ had, together with some
vague hints unconsciously dropped by Angela and a few words of the
banker's overheard, set Kate's wits to working, and thus she arrived,
through sympathy, at something like the truth. But Mr. Morehouse's
diagnosis of the case had in it no such romantic ingredient as hopeless
love.
He alone in America (since Theo Dene was gone, and Kate merely suspected)
knew that Mrs. May was the Princess di Sereno, who had never been a wife
to Paolo di Sereno except in name. He knew that the Princess had
grievances, and that she had left her identity in the Old World in the
wish to forget the past completely. Knowing this, when a certain piece of
news came his way he felt it his disagreeable duty to pass it on to Mrs.
May. And it was the very piece of news which had set Theo Dene wondering
whether Angela "knew about the Prince."
Most California journals are apt to give local matters of interest
precedence over affairs at a distance, and so it was that (though Angela
usually glanced through a newspaper every day or two during her travels)
she had never come upon Paolo di Sereno's name except in that old copy of
the _Illustrated London News_. There she learned how well he was amusing
himself while Mrs. May saw California under Nick Hilliard's guidance. But
after that came a blank. She knew only that he and a somewhat notorious
woman were making ascents together in an aeroplane. But it remained for
Mr. Morehouse to tell her of the sensation the pair were creating in
Europe.
There was a woman--indeed, there was invariably a woman, though not always
the same--whose flaunting friendship with the Prince had fixed Angela's
resolve to turn her back on the old life. The woman had begun a career on
the very humblest plane, had become an artist's model, then had learned to
sing and dance, and at length her reputation as a beauty had made her name
famous. A marquis had married her, and when his heart was broken and his
money spent, had obligingly killed himself in an inconspicuous and
gentlemanly manner. After that his widow had achieved an even greater
popular success, and had attracted the attention of Paolo di Sereno.
It was about this time that Angela left Rome, and what Theo Dene wondered
if Mrs. May "knew about the Prince," was his hope to break the record for
distance in a new aeroplane. Mr. Morehouse, who took one or two French and
English illustrated weeklies as well as New York daily papers, saw these
things as soon as Theo Dene saw them; and, when Angela returned to San
Francisco from Bakersfield, he told her of the Prince's project.
"I reasoned," he said, "that it would be better for you to hear what is
going on from me rather than be exposed to a surprise and shock from some
London or Paris paper lying on a hotel table."
Angela interrupted him to reply that nothing the Prince di Sereno could do
had power to shock her, for they had never been really in each other's
lives, and had now passed out of one another's orbits forever. In spite of
this assurance, however, when Mr. Morehouse saw the Princess looking pale
and listless taking little interest in the plans for her new house, he
attributed the change to humiliation, or possibly even to fears for the
Prince's safety, for women are strange. Luckily she could not be annoyed
in this new country where she would make her home, for nobody knew who she
was or could associate her with the Prince's eccentricities! Nevertheless,
Mr. Morehouse thought it natural that her health and spirits should
suffer; and because of his old and close friendship with Franklin Merriam
he longed to find some wholesome distraction for Angela.
But after all it was Kate, not he, who succeeded in supplying it. Poor
Kate, so near to, yet so far from, Oregon, dared in her insignificance to
follow her mistress's example. Though she would have had a hand cut off
rather than "give notice" to her beloved lady, as a matter of fact, she
was pining; Tim was growing impatient. His affairs were marching well.
Something had been saved out of the disaster caused by his dishonest
partner. He had got in with a "good man," and they believed that together
they would some day "beat the world" with their apples. Already they had
obtained a London market. There wasn't much ready money to spare yet; but
Tim could manage to pay Kate's way from San Francisco to Portland, and on
to his place, if she would come. Besides, there was her nest egg, her
dowry, from the sale of the gold bag.
Of course, Kate was dying to go, but would not even tell her sad-eyed,
pale-cheeked mistress that Tim was wanting her. It was only when, one day,
Angela noticed how miserable poor Kate was looking, that little by little
she drew out the whole truth. Then she was roused to interest, and
forgetfulness of herself.
"I'll tell you what I will do, Kate," she said with more animation than
she had shown for weeks. "I'll take Mr. Morehouse's very latest advice,
and run up north to Lake Tahoe, to stay till my new house is born. Then,
instead of your going to your Tim, he must come to you; and I'll give you
a wedding--oh, a beautiful wedding, with a white silk dress and a veil and
orange blossoms, and a cake big enough to last you the rest of your life.
You're not to make any objections, because I shouldn't be happy to have
you stay with me now that Tim's ready, and you know the idea always was
for you to go when I'd reached my farthest point north and nearest to
Oregon. Besides, it will do me good to plan for a wedding. And I mean to
give you your trousseau. You shall get the things here in San Francisco
before we start for Tahoe."
So that was why one evening Nick read in a San Francisco paper that "Mrs.
May, who has been staying at the Fairmont Hotel for several weeks, left
last night for Lake Tahoe, where she has engaged rooms at the famous
Tahoe Tavern, and may remain for some time."
Afterward, when he sent the paper on to Sara Wilkins, as he did send
papers now, with parcels of books and magazines, she too noticed the
paragraph.
"His star's gone as far north and as far from him as she can possibly go
and be in California," thought the school-teacher. And because Nick was
right, and her good little face hid a heart that was still better, she was
not glad, but very, very sorry.
When Kate was married to her good-looking Irishman, and the little
excitement of the wedding was over, Angela began to feel rather desolate.
There were a great many pleasant people at the tavern who would have been
kind to the stranger if she had let them be kind, but they were all so
merry and had so many intimate interests of their own that their goodness
to her seemed only to emphasize her loneliness. Kate had insisted on
"lending" her Timmy in fact, the bride and bridegroom both insisted, for
there was no doubt in their minds that the black cat had brought them good
fortune. Now they had all the fortune they wanted, to "go on with," and as
poor, pretty Mrs. May seemed "a bit down on her luck," they would leave
her Timmy to bring it back again. And really the topaz-eyed creature, in
its becoming jade collar--a gift from Nick Hilliard--was often a comfort
to Angela, curled up in her lap and purring cosily under her book as she
read. It seemed curiously fond of her, even fonder than of Kate, and had
"taken to" her from the first.
Angela had travelled through a region of snowsheds to reach the lake in
the heart of the Sierra Nevada, and the scenery was as different from any
she had met in California as was her mood from the mood of the south. At
Tahoe she was a mile above sea-level, and ringed in by higher mountains
which had not lost their dazzling crowns of snow.
On the shore of the long blue lake that mirrored eternally, a clear, cool
sky and immense dark trees--pines and cedars--Angela felt that a line had
been drawn between her and her California past, with its flame of golden,
poppies and flowers of the forest. Here she had reached a high note of
beauty which rang crystalline as a silver rod striking upon ice. The place
gave Angela a sense of purity and remoteness which she had felt by no
lake-shore of Europe. The charm of other lakes had been their
villa-sprinkled shores, their historical associations. The charm of Tahoe
was loneliness. She liked to row out on the water alone, and rest on her
oars to look down, down, through miles (it seemed) of liquid sapphire and
emerald blending together.
Tahoe was not remote, really since luxurious trains had brought it into
close touch with San Francisco and with the East; but Angela liked to
cultivate the impression of remoteness as if she were a nun in retreat,
and the beauty was of a kind that called to her spirit, making
renunciation easier than in the luscious south, scented with lilies and
roses. Tahoe had its roses, too; but its chief perfume was of pines and
the pure freshness of breezes that blow over water and snow mountains.
The journey, too, had prepared her for the isolation that she craved; the
glimpse of tragic Donner Lake, where the pioneers starved and agonized in
1848; the wild Truckee River sweeping its flood past thickets of pale
sagebrush and forests of black pines; the tang of cold and the smell of
snow in the air; the lonely farmhouses folded among green hills; and the
primitive look of Truckee town with its little frame buildings called by
pretentious foreign names; Firenze Saloon; Roma Hotel.
Nobody else, however, seemed to have the half-sad, half-delicious sense of
remoteness from the world, at Tahoe, which Angela had. That month was very
gay, and the immense verandas of the tavern were flower-gardens of pretty
girls--those American "summer girls," of whom Angela had often heard. They
swam, and boated and fished, and, above all, flirted, for there were
always plenty of men; and in the evenings they danced in the ballroom of
the casino, built on the edge of the water.
Angela never tired of going from end to end of the lake in the steamboat
that set out from the tavern jetty in the morning and returned in the
afternoon. The captain, a great character, let her sit in a room behind
the pilot-box, where her luncheon was brought by an eager-eyed youth
working his way through college by serving as steward in the holidays. He
was in love with a girl at his university, equally poor and equally
plucky; but because she was earning dollars as a waitress at the tavern,
the boy thought Tahoe a place "where you couldn't help being happy."
Angela thought it a place where, more than most others, it might be
possible to find peace, though happiness was gone.
She no longer opened her diary. Never again, she told herself, would she
keep a record of her days. But, some time--years from now, maybe--when
she could read what she had written without a heartache, she would open
the unfinished volume where she had broken off a sentence in the great
redwood forest. She might be able to think of Nick Hilliard then without
longing for him; but that time seemed far, very far away.
* * * * *
One August evening Angela came back from an excursion to the top of Mount
Tallac. She was tired, and had made up her mind to dine in her own
sitting-room, then to go immediately to bed; but asking for her key she
was told that "a lady was waiting to see her; had been waiting nearly all
day."
"A lady!" she echoed. Could it be Mrs. Gaylor? Angela hoped not; for,
though she had not heard from Nick those things which Carmen had feared
and expected her to hear, she guessed something of Carmen's hate. The fact
that she had not been allowed to go back; that Kate had arrived in
Bakersfield with a story of Mrs. Gaylor's being called suddenly away from
home; that Carmen had never answered a short letter she wrote; all these
things roused her suspicions. Indeed, she had even gone so far as to
associate the box of poison-oak leaves with Mrs. Gaylor; and now the
thought that the Spanish woman might have followed her to Tahoe sent a
shiver through her veins. Who could the lady be, if not Carmen Gaylor? Who
but Carmen would wait patiently for her coming, through a whole day?
For an instant Angela was tempted to answer: "I'm too tired to see any one
this evening." But that would be cowardly. Besides, she was curious to
see her visitor, whoever it might be.
"The lady's waiting in the veranda now," said a hotel clerk. "She's been
here ever since morning, but she went away at lunch time and came back
afterward. I don't know what she means to do to-night, for the train for
Truckee will be leaving in a few minutes, and she hasn't engaged a room."
Angela went out on the veranda, feeling' a little tense and excited, but
when a small, blue-frocked, gray-hatted figure, dejectedly lost in a big
rocking-chair, was pointed out to her, excitement died while bewilderment
grew.
Her first thought was that she had never seen this countrified-looking
person before, but as her guest turned, raising to hers a pair of
singularly intelligent, rather frightened eyes, she knew that she had met
the same glance from the same eyes somewhere before.
The little woman's face was so pale, so tired, her whole personality so
pathetic yet indomitable, that Angela's heart softened.
"How do you do?" she asked kindly. "I hear you have come to see me, so we
must know each other, I'm sure----"
The visitor was on her feet, the chair, from which she had sprung with a
nervous jerk, rocking frantically as if a nervous ghost were sitting in
it.
"We don't know each other exactly," Miss Wilkins hastened to explain, as
though eager not to begin with false pretences. "The only time you ever
saw me was at Santa Barbara last May, but you were very good to me
and--and I found out your name----"
"Of course. I remember quite well!" Mrs. May smiled reassuringly, for the
poor little thing was certainly terrified and ill at ease as well as
tired. Angela sprang to the conclusion that the young woman was in money
difficulties, and having remembered the loan of the sitting-room at Santa
Barbara had somehow found her way to Tahoe in the hope of getting help.
Well, she should have it. Angela was only too glad to be able to do
something for any one in trouble. "I'm glad to see you again," she said,
as if it were quite a commonplace thing for a stranger to have dropped
apparently from the clouds in search of her. "But I'm so sorry you've had
to wait. Perhaps you wrote and I haven't got the letter yet?"
"No, I didn't write. I couldn't have explained in a letter," said the
weary-faced visitor; "and maybe you wouldn't have wanted me to come if
you'd known before-hand. I thought if I'd travelled all this way though,
just to speak to you, you wouldn't refuse. I've been two nights on the
way."
"Oh, how dreadful!" exclaimed Angela. "You must let me get you a room at
once. Some people are leaving to-night. They surely can put you up in the
hotel."
"Thank you very much," returned the young woman, "but I couldn't impose on
you as your guest. You'll see that when I've told you why I came. I can't
get away to Truckee, I know, for the train goes too soon, but I'll take a
room at some simpler place where it's cheaper than this."
"We'll talk of that later," said Angela soothingly. "Now I hope you'll
come to my rooms and rest, and tell me about yourself. When we're both
washed and refreshed we'll dine together in my sitting-room quietly."
"But it isn't about myself I want to talk," protested the stranger. "I
must tell you my name, Mrs. May. Of course, you've forgotten it. It's Miss
Wilkins--Sara Wilkins."
She didn't want to talk about herself! That was puzzling and didn't fit in
with Angela's deductions. However, she made no comment, and talking of her
day on Mount Tallac, escorted Miss Wilkins to a pretty sitting-room, which
in her absence had been supplied with fresh flowers.
"Shall we talk first?" Angela asked. "Or would you like to rest and
bathe----"
"If you're not too tired yourself to listen to me, I'd rather talk now,"
Sara answered with a kind of suppressed desperation. "But you do look
tired. You're thinner and paler than at Santa Barbara! Yet I've been
screwing my courage up to this for so long I can hardly bear to wait."
"If I was tired I've forgotten it now," said Angela. "And I'm as eager to
begin as you can be. But you mustn't feel that it needs courage to speak
out, whatever you have to say. And if there's any way for me to make it
easier for you, I should be so glad if you could give me just the
slightest hint. Shall we both sit down on this sofa together?"
"You sit there," replied Sara. "I don't _want_ to be comfortable. I
couldn't lean back. I'm all on edge."
"Oh, but you mustn't be 'on edge'!"
"I don't tell you that to get sympathy, Mrs. May," said the
school-teacher, "but only because I'd like you to understand before I
begin that I haven't come just to be 'cheeky' and bold. I came because I
felt I must--on somebody's account, if not yours. For myself, I didn't
want to force myself on you. I didn't want it one bit! And now I'm here,
if I could do what I feel most like doing, I'd run away as fast as ever I
could go, without saying one more word."
"You almost frighten me," said Angela, her eyes dark and serious. "Have I
done something dreadful that--that I ought to be warned not to do again,
and you have come to tell me because you think I was once a little kind to
you? Not that I was really kind--for it was nothing at all that I did."
Miss Wilkins, sitting stiff and upright on the smallest, straightest,
least luxurious chair in the pretty room, was silent for an instant, as if
collecting all her forces. "No," she answered at last. "It wouldn't be
fair to say exactly that. And yet you _have_ done something dreadful. Oh,
my goodness, this is even harder to get out than--than I supposed it would
be, for, of course, you'll think it's not my business anyhow. And isn't or
wouldn't be if--if----"
"If--what?" Angela prompted her gently.
Sara Wilkins swallowed a lump in her throat and pressed her lips together.
They were dry and pale. "Well," she broke out, "I'll have to tell you the
truth and not care for my own feelings. They don't matter really. It
wouldn't be my business if I didn't love him myself, dearly--oh, but not
selfishly! And he doesn't dream of it. He never will. And he never thinks
about me except to pity me a little and do kind things because I'm alone
in the world. And that's all I want of him. It is, truly, though I can't
explain very well. I just want him to be happy, and to have made him so.
Because _somebody_ had to act if anything was to be done. And there was
nobody but me."
"Him!" Angela repeated in a whisper. Yet the name was in her mind now, as
always it was in her heart.
"Mr. Hilliard, of course. You see"--desperately--"I'm school-teacher at
Lucky Star City, close to his place. All the land there and the big gusher
were his. When he came back in June I was at Lucky Star, and we were
introduced. He remembered my face dimly, more I guess because he couldn't
forget even the least thing associated with you than for any other reason.
Since then we've got to be friends."
Angela did not speak, even when Sara Wilkins made a slight hesitating
pause. Her heart was beating too fast and thickly for words to come, and,
besides, there seemed to be nothing to say yet, until she had heard more.
"Don't think," Sara went on, gathering courage, "that he confided in me in
any ordinary way. I just couldn't bear you should do him that injustice.
If you did I should have done harm instead of good by coming all this way
to see you. But the very first day I met him at Lucky Star I asked about
you, and I--_saw_; though he only said he believed you were in San
Francisco--that he was heart-broken about you. Even at Santa Barbara I
couldn't help making up a romance round you both--you so beautiful and
somehow like a great lady, though you didn't put on any airs at all; he so
handsome and splendid, like a hero in some book of the West. It was weeks
before we mentioned you again--he and I--though I saw a lot of him at
Lucky Star. He was kind, and it was holidays, so I hadn't much to do
except read books he lent me."
Still Angela said nothing, though it was evident that Miss Wilkins would
have been thankful at this stage for some leading question which might
help her over a difficult place. Angela could not now give the help she
had once offered. Rather was she in need of it herself. She sat waiting,
her eyes disconcertingly fixed upon the other woman's flushed face. But
that was because she could not bring herself to look away from it.
"Before we spoke of you again, what do you think he'd been doing?" the
school-teacher went on, almost fiercely.
"Oh, I can hardly tell you, it's so sad! If you're the sweet woman that in
spite of everything I think you _are_, you'll be sorry all the way through
to your heart. He--he hired a wretched humbug of a man who pretended to be
an English swell to teach him _manners_, so that he could be a little
worthier of you. He, _Nick Hilliard_, the noblest gentleman that ever drew
breath, to stoop to learning from a little thing who called itself Montagu
Jerrold. He did it because of what _you_ said to him."
"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.
"I do hope you'll forgive me," she stammered. "I--I didn't mean to make
you suffer like this. I'm so afraid I've done everything all wrong! But I
let my feelings carry me away. I thought if you loved him a little after
all, maybe----"
"Loved him! I love him so much that it's killing me!" Angela broke out
through her tears. "I can't sleep at night, for thinking of him, longing
for him, and telling myself it's all over--all the joy of waking up to a
new day and knowing I shall see him. Ah, night is terrible! I pray for
peace, and just as I begin to hope--to be a little calmer, at least by
day, out in the sunshine looking at the white mountains, you, a stranger,
come and tell me that I _don't love him!_"
"I wouldn't have dared if I didn't love him myself," Sara retorted,
choking on the words. "You see--I _know_. But if you care for him like
this, if you're so unhappy without him, why did you send him away
broken-hearted?"
Angela flung her hands up, then dropped them hopelessly. With no attempt
to hide her tear-blurred face she answered: "I sent him away because I am
married. I said 'It is impossible'; not--what he seems to think I said."
"Oh, how sad!" The little school-teacher was confronting real tragedy for
the first time in her gray, conscientious existence. "How sorry I am.
Forgive me! But--you know, it isn't I who matter."
"No," Angela echoed. "It isn't you."
"You didn't tell him? You gave him no idea?"
"I hadn't a chance. There'd been an evening, a little while before, when
I'd meant to tell if--if anything happened. But--we were interrupted."
"He thinks you're a young widow."
"Yes. It's only in the sight of the world that I have a husband--that I
_ever_ had one. When I came to America I left the man for good, and took
another name."
"'Mrs. May' isn't your real name?"
"No. I'll tell you if you like----"
"You needn't. But you ought to tell _him_. That, and everything. I don't
mean _confess_, or anything like that. Probably you thought, till you
fell in love with him, that there was no reason why you should give him
your secrets. What I mean is--oh, the difference it would make to Mr.
Hilliard, knowing that you sent him away, not because you looked down on
him as common and impossible, but because you had no _right_ to care!"
Angela stared at the earnest little face as if she were dazed, bewildered
in a dark place, and groping for light.
"I had no idea he misunderstood me so," she said slowly. "If I'd guessed
at the time, I couldn't have resisted telling him how much I loved him. I
couldn't have let him go, so wounded. But now, since no happiness can ever
come for us together, and perhaps by this time he is getting over his
first suffering, wouldn't it be better just to leave the veil of silence
down between us? I don't want to hurt him all his life long. It must make
it easier for him to forget, if he believes me a 'doll stuffed with
sawdust,' or a snob. He can't go on for long loving a poor thing like
that. And so he will be cured. Oh, though I long to send him a message--I
mustn't. I mustn't be tempted! Let him think badly of me. It's the best
and kindest thing."
"No," said Sara Wilkins, "that is not the right way; not for _him_. It
might be with a vain man. But he doesn't get over it. He doesn't stop
loving you. Only the pain is worse because he thinks you scorned him. Mrs.
May, I implore you to write him a letter. I can't take a message, because
he mustn't know I came to see you. It would spoil it all for him, I think.
Write as if it were of your own accord. Don't _explain_ in the letter.
Letters are such hard, unsatisfactory things. The best one you could write
wouldn't make up to him a bit for what he's suffered and what he must go
on suffering, for you couldn't help studying your words, and they'd be
stiff and disappointing, no matter how hard you tried to say the things
just right. Ask him to come here and let you explain in your own words why
you seemed so harsh. Only, warn him that it isn't to change your mind
about--about saying _yes_. It would be awful to rush up here happy and
hopeful, only to find out--what he'll have to find out."
"You don't understand," said Angela. "I care too much to dare see him
again. I couldn't trust myself. I----"
"Ah, but you could trust _him_. He's strong and high in his nature--like
the great redwoods."
"Yes, like the great redwoods," Angela echoed, in a whisper.
"He'd be a rock, too--a rock to rely upon," Sara went on. "Do this, Mrs.
May. Do it for my sake. I know it's the right thing. It will give him back
his self-respect. That's even more important than happiness, especially to
him. I've done all I could for you--not much, but my best. Do this for me,
will you?"
"Yes, I will!" Angela answered suddenly and impulsively. She put out her
hands to the little school-teacher and drew her close. They kissed each
other, the two women who loved Nick Hilliard.