The hour for luncheon was past, but Nick ordered flowers and a feast for a dream-bride. Then, while it was preparing, the two walked in the garden court and under pergolas where bunches of wistaria, lit from above by the sun, hung like thousands of amethyst lanterns.
"I shall build a house like this in miniature," said Angela, half to herself. "I can't have the shrines and the 'Mission' Arches with the bell-windows; but I can have the court and the arcades and the pergolas; and a well and lots of fountains. Inside there shall be walls of natural wood, and great beams across the ceilings, and big brick chimneys--'Mission' furniture too, and Indian rugs and pottery. I can hardly wait to begin that house!"
"Where will it be?" Nick asked, afraid of the answer.
"Oh, yes! I don't know where, yet. I'm falling in love with the South now, but I won't let myself fall too deep in, till I've seen the North."
"If you're in love, _can_ you keep yourself from falling deeper in?" said Nick. "I don't think I could; I'd sure have to let myself go."
It had been so good to see the forest creature at the moment when he was needed most, that Angela had melted toward him as snow melts in the spring sun. She had not only forgiven, but forgotten--for the moment--that there had been things to forgive; so she answered this question of his, humanly and simply. "I wonder?" she said. "If it were not a question of a country, but a person? I can't tell. I've never fallen deep in." Then she pulled herself up abruptly. "Luncheon must be ready," she went on in a changed voice. "I'm starving, aren't you?"
"Starving!" Nick answered mechanically. But he was saying in his heart, "She's never been in love! Hooray!"
The thought shot new colour into existence. "I'll pull the world up by the roots to get her," he thought. "And she wants to live in California! Maybe, if I try to make myself all over again, a little worthier--a little more like what she's used to, at last she----" It seemed sacrilege to finish the sentence.
It was for this end, to "make himself more like what she was used to," that he had bought the new clothes in New York. They had not been a success. But, luckily for his happiness to-day, he did not know how Angela had laughed when she saw the shiny shoes outside his door.