Theo Dene talked of Carmen Gaylor, telling stories she had heard of the rich widow from people whose acquaintance she had first made at Del Monte. "I am longing to meet the woman," she said; "I think she must be an interesting character, typically Spanish, or Mexican--or, anyhow, not American--from what they all say. A beauty--vain and jealous, and a fearful temper. I shouldn't like to interfere 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.
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.