So Nick sat down on the step, and her shoulder touched his arm. They talked in low voices, he telling her things to "keep her mind off" the situation: things about the Mission and other Missions. Then the conversation turned to Nick's ranch and the oil gusher which had given him fortune out of threatening ruin; and he described the queer little oil city which had grown up on his land.
"I should like to see it," Angela said, when he had pictured Lucky Star City and ranch in a simple way, which was nevertheless curiously graphic.
He caught up her words eagerly. "Would you let me take you there?" he begged. "Mrs. Gaylor'd invite you to stay at her house. You know I've told you about that, and how——"
"Yes, I know." Angela could hardly have explained why, but somehow she did not want to hear Mrs. Gaylor talked of just then. She was no longer indifferent to the idea of seeing Nick's home, and the woman who had helped him to make it, yet she was not sure that she wished to go there. Certainly she did not wish to visit Mrs. Gaylor. But—she would like to know whether the mistress of the Gaylor ranch was really so very beautiful.
"What we must think about now, is how to get out of this church," she went on, laughing faintly in the dark. "It seems as if we might have to stay here all the rest of our lives."
"Are you hungry?" Nick inquired.
"A little."
In his enraged disgust at not being able to procure a meal, Nick would gladly have killed and cooked the owl.
"Are you?" Angela asked.
"Am I—what?"