of the gallery, and made her sit down on the lower one,
rolling up for a cushion his coat, on which she had knelt as she looked at
the vestments. It began to seem odd that Billy had not come back, but it
was difficult for Nick to regret the delay as much as he ought, for
Angela's sake, to have regretted it.

When she shivered and confessed that she was cold, Nick fetched her a
priest's coat from the gallery, a rare piece of brocade, embroidered
perhaps by queen's fingers, and smelling of incense.

"What can have happened to Billy?" Angela wondered. "It's the strangest
thing that he doesn't come back. I begin to be frightened about him."

Nick reassured her once more. Things often seemed queer that were simple
when explained, as doubtless this would be. "I suppose you'd not like me
to go----" he began, only to be cut short before he could finish his
sentence.

"No--if you mean, would I like you to go and look. While you're here----"

"Yes, Mrs. May?"

"Why, of course, nothing matters so much. And I wish you wouldn't stand
where I can't see you. Do sit down on this step by me."

So Nick sat down on the step, and her shoulder touched his arm. They
talked in low voices, he telling her things to "keep her mind off" the
situation: things about the Mission and other Missions. Then the
conversation turned to Nick's ranch and the oil gusher which had given him
fortune out of threatening ruin; and he described the queer little oil
city which had grown up on his land.

"I should like to see it," Angela said, when he had pictured Lucky Star
City and ranch in a simple way, which was nevertheless curiously graphic.

He caught up her words eagerly. "Would you let me take you there?" he
begged. "Mrs. Gaylor'd invite you to stay at her house. You know I've told
you about that, and how----"

"Yes, I know." Angela could hardly have explained why, but somehow she
did not want to hear Mrs. Gaylor talked of just then. She was no longer
indifferent to the idea of seeing Nick's home, and the woman who had
helped him to make it, yet she was not sure that she wished to go there.
Certainly she did not wish to visit Mrs. Gaylor. But--she would like to
know whether the mistress of the Gaylor ranch was really so very
beautiful.

"What we must think about now, is how to get out of this church," she went
on, laughing faintly in the dark. "It seems as if we might have to stay
here all the rest of our lives."

"Are you hungry?" Nick inqui