“You mean—­you came to New Orleans because I——­”

“Yes, that’s right,” he finished for her, when she paused, at a loss for words.  “Something made me do it.  Something stronger than I am.  You were a kind of dissolving view, and I couldn’t let it get out of my sight for good.  When I heard you’d gone to New Orleans by boat——­”

“How did you find out?” Angela’s sweet voice had a sharp edge.

“In the travel bureau of the Valmont Hotel.”

“Ah!  Was that quite—­considerate?”

“I know how it sounds to you.  But it wasn’t so bad as you think.  I inquired as if from a friend of yours, a man I know out home——­”

“How—­how horrid of you!  I’d rather you didn’t explain any more.”  Angela’s cheeks were bright pink, and she was more beautiful than Nick had ever seen her before, except the night of the burglar, when she had been drowned in the gold waves of her hair, the angel of his dreams.  “But you may go on about the rest,” she added hastily, when he was struck into silence, without being able to bring in the name of his one excuse, Mr. Henry Morehouse.  “I’d better know the worst.  When you heard where I’d gone——­”

“Well, I was too late for your ship, because I had to hang on and see Dutchy’s case through, so I took the first train I could get when that business was wound up.  And in New Orleans I found you.  I didn’t know for certain where you were going next, but——­”

“But what?”

“I was pretty sure you were bound for California.  And anyhow, wherever it was, I made up my mind to go.  Not to bother you—­no more than if I was your hired man.  Just to see you through, from a distance, to know you were all right, and—­and not to lose sight of you.  I—­of course you can’t understand.  I reckon no woman could.  I don’t wonder you’re mad.  I was dead sure you would be.  Yet I had to stand for it.”

“It’s the most extraordinary thing I ever heard,” said Angela, working herself up to be as angry as she ought to be.  “That you should have left New York, after being there only a few days, and—­oh, it doesn’t bear thinking of!  And I’d rather not believe it.”

Again Nick wished to wave the name of Morehouse like a white flag of truce, but the San Franciscan lawyer, lying far away in a New York hospital, seemed too weak to flutter in the breeze of Mrs. May’s displeasure.

“I’d rather have jogged along without tellin’ you this,” he said.  “But as things worked out, it seemed as if I had to speak.”

Angela was silent, busily thinking for a moment.

“Would you leave the train at the next stop, if I asked you?” she inquired.