"I should like to, very much," he said. "But you've found friends. I
could come back afterward, and take you around Santa Barbara, unless----"
"One of the friends was glad when she heard you being invited," Theo Dene
broke in. "And the other friends are so new, Mrs. May hasn't met them yet.
You shall be introduced all together in a bunch."
Of course, at that Nick came up the steps and joined Angela. He had a
curious feeling as if he ought to be defending her from something; and at
the same time a sensation of relief when he heard her once again called
"Mrs. May." "Princess" was only a sort of pet name, no doubt. That was
what he had hoped when the word caught his startled attention. He would
not like to have her turn into a real princess. An angel she was for him,
and might be, without seeming hopelessly remote somehow; but the pedestal
of a princess was cold as a block of marble.
The poster-simile did not occur to Nick; but he thought that the
red-haired girl with the self-conscious eyes, standing beside Mrs. May,
was like a coloured lithograph in a magazine, compared with a delicate
painting in a picture gallery, such as he loved to go and see in San
Francisco. Miss Dene's peculiar attraction, strong for many men, left him
cold, although he might have felt it if he had never seen Angela.
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