ere with a woman of that sort in
what she thought her 'rights,' should you?"

[Illustration: "_They weren't trees, but people, either nymphs or
witches_"]

"One can't interfere with a person one has never met, can one?" Angela
remarked, pretending not to understand.

"Maybe not, in real life," Theo agreed. "I'm always losing myself in my
books, and forgetting that the world outside isn't like _my_ world, made
of romance. But you can understand, can't you; here where it's so
beautiful that even a _married woman_--who has, of course, left love far
behind her in Europe--must feel some faint yearning to be the heroine of a
romance?"

Princess di Sereno wondered why she had ever been nice to Theo in Rome.

XVIII

LA DONNA E MOBILE

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 loveline