"Oh!" murmured Angela, and clutched Nick's coat sleeve, like a girl of early Victorian days. But, after all, women have not changed in essentials. They are much the same now in the dark, when pale things stir or shine unexpectedly; and they are still glad to have with them at such times a man, preferably a handsome man, they happen to like better than any other.
"Great Scot, it's an owl!" said Nick, profiting by the last match of all. It was, or appeared to be, a white owl; and it seemed to him for a second or two as if the witch-bird of the Grapevine man at Los Angeles had come to give the advice it had refused. But this was a childish idea, he knew! The owl was a plain, ordinary owl, which no doubt lived in the neighbourhood of San Miguel, and had flopped in, perhaps in search of the proverbial church mouse. It was afraid of the other intruders, and afraid of the match, so afraid that it flapped its wings and hooted dismally. It hooted three times, which, if it had been the witch fortune-teller, might really have meant something, though there was no time just then to think what. Nick was somewhat alarmed lest, in its anger and fear, it should dash at Angela's face, but she would not let him strike the creature with his hat.
"No, poor thing, it's worse off than we are, because it's alone, and we're together," she said. "We'll go, and leave it in peace now we know what it is." And she kept beside Nick in the dark by holding daintily to his coat sleeve.
He found the steps 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."