me?" he asked. Perhaps she was
going to say that after all she would not go out to-morrow.

"No, not that I forgot--something I _want_ to say. Come in again."

She whisked the tail of her black chiffon dress back into the room. He
followed her, wondering and silently anxious.

"I've changed my mind," she said in a low voice. (There! He had known it.
She was not going.)

"_Would_ you still care to be my 'trail guide' in the Yosemite Valley?"

"Would I care?" echoed Nick.

"Then we'll go. I'll give up the McCloud River. I'll telephone Mrs.
Harland--she's in San Francisco till day after to-morrow. I'll find an
excuse--I haven't had time to think it out yet. But I don't care _what_
happens, I won't change again! I'm going to the Yosemite if you'll take
me."

He looked at her searchingly. "Because you're kind-hearted, and afraid
you've hurt me----"

"No--no! _Because I want to go!_"

Women are strange, and hard to understand, when they are worth taking the
trouble to understand; and even then they cannot understand themselves.

XIX

THE CITY OF ROMANCE

Angela was ridiculously happy next morning. She had no regrets. Nick had
stayed to dinner after all, and they had made plans. There was nothing in
this, really, she reminded herself, laughing five times an hour; nothing
at all. But it was about as wild and exciting as if--as if it were an
elopement: to have given up everything she had almost decided upon, and to
be going to the Yosemite Valley--with Nick, whom she had intended gently
to put in his place--at a distance from hers.

"There will never, never be anything in my life again like this," she
said. "I've never lived. I've never done the things I wanted to do. There
was always some one or something to keep me back. Now, for a week or a
fortnight, I shall live--live! nothing and no one shall keep me back." She
knew how absolutely contradictory this was, after taking so much pains to
"let the 'forest creature' down gently," and begin all over again. But she
did not care. Nothing mattered, except that she could not send him to Mrs.
Gaylor. As gaily as she had embarked upon the "little adventure" at Los
Angeles, did she now face the great one.

Nick, too, was violently happy, happier than he had ever been or supposed
it possible to be. At Los Angeles he had hardly dared to hope for
anything beyond the pleasure of having this woman by his side for a few
hours. Since then, his feelings had, as he expr