That he might not see the wild joy that leaped to her eyes, Miss Hastings turned with startling suddenness and fled upstairs.  Safe in her own room she flung herself with tears and laughter on the bed.  So that was the hand he was playing, was it? — the dear, wicked, unmanageable — !  Of course he would have to be punished, — well punished! but — she laughed aloud for pure joy — the world was a radiant place once more, and nothing of any sort really mattered, because he was coming back.

But the next day went by, and the next, and he had not come.  Day after day passed in an empty procession, yet no one of them brought that for which she waited.  And there was nothing else to do.  Work was out of the question.  She could not sit still long enough.  It became, instead, her sole occupation to linger each morning and afternoon on the verandah until the steamer from Los Angeles had rounded the point and crossed the bay in front of the hotel.  Then, hidden behind the palms she would watch until the last straggling tourist had left the pier.  But still he did not come.

Doubt in every tormenting guise assailed her.  Perhaps he had changed his mind and decided later not to return.  Yet the clerk had said he meant to come back!  Perhaps her check, sent by mail, was even now in her box.  But she had not the courage to go again to the desk.  Driven by alternate hope and fear she lost color, and she could not sleep.  During seven miserable nights she planned to go back to Pasadena by the morning boat, and as many times she put it off.  Yet, if he did return to find her waiting, what, then, would she have given him the right to think?  But, on the other hand, if she went she might never see him again!

On the eighth day she took herself grimly in hand.  No longer would she humiliate herself by any further delay.  Wildenai had not waited, and even a school teacher can be as proud as an Indian princess!  That very afternoon she would finish her sketch of the cavern.  Then tomorrow she would go back to Pasadena and the long gray round of work.  Desolately she wandered up the secret trail to Wildenai’s bower.  Never had her sympathy for the deserted princess been so keen.  Perhaps, she mournfully considered, if the spirit of the Indian maiden still lingered there it might feel sympathy for her as well.  Perhaps she, too, would find comfort in the spot where that other woman had paid an equal price for her impulsiveness.

The shadows in the little cavern were dark and cool and, laying aside her box of colors, for a long time she sat quite motionless, staring out to where the gulls drifted and glinted against the blue.  She heard after a while the whistle of the approaching steamer but gave no heed.  Lying back against the moss she had almost dropped asleep when something in the corner opposite attracted her attention.  She sat up nervously and stared into the shadows.  Was it only that the darkness was deeper over there, or was that really something propped against the wall?  And had it moved?