He might unobtrusively have stayed, she
thought, and put himself at her service. Not the most clinging Old Man of
the Sea could continue to cling if that square-chinned bronze statue
pointed out the wisdom of letting go. But no doubt _he_ was at home near
Bakersfield, before this--Angela seldom named Nick in her mind--otherwise
she must have run across him somewhere that first day at the City of the
Angels when she had spun gaily from park to park, the Model for once
behaving well. Almost, she had expected to see him the next morning when
the car refused to move, and she had taken a trolley car, halfway to San
Gabriel. It would have seemed appropriate, somehow, to meet him strolling
in front of the Mission, his hands in his pockets, gazing up at the
beautiful half-ruined facade, with its delicate chain-armour of gold
lichen, its tower, and its flowers like blossoming barnacles.
Angela knew now that she had felt certain of meeting Hilliard
"accidentally," in the Mission church. That while she walked beside the
elderly Spanish verger, chatting of his native Cordova, listening to tales
of Father Juniperra Serra, Father Somera, and the legend of the Indians
with the miraculous portrait of the Madonna, she had started more than
once at a footfall, fancying it that of her lost hero.
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